What is in Kelvin's Head?

The Apology Nick Clegg should have made

19/09/2012

I’d like to take a few moments of your time to clear the air. It is obvious to me that significant numbers of people who voted for the Liberal Democrats at the last election have felt let down by how the Liberal Democrats have behaved in government. The reality is that we have let down not only those who voted for us but most particularly those who worked hardest to put Liberal Democrats in parliament. The time has come for me to put on record my thoughts about this and then make some suggestions as to the way forward.

Firstly, there is no doubt that people have been disappointed that we formed a coalition with the Conservative Party. I make no apology for doing so. The country needed a stable government, we believe that coalition government can be a good thing and I’ve fought every election because I want a share in power in order to implement liberal policies and make the country a better place for all. However, the manner in which we entered into this coalition was not good for the country. People needed to be able to see that we were fighting within the coalition for the values we hold dear. Instead of that, people saw us as those who were enabling the Tory party to have its way, cutting much needed taxation, promoting policies to benefit the few rather than the manyÂ such as the removal of essential benefits and further emphasising the North-South divide in the UK. We should have been much more cautious. We should have opposed such plans both publicly as well as privately.

Secondly, it is obvious to everyone that we made a big mistake on tuition fees. We should not have gone back on our pledge to vote against tuitions fees. It was not merely foolish politically to be photographed making those pledges, it was fundamentally wrong to break them. I now take full responsibility for advising others in the party to do so and I will take the consequences of those decisions. I make no apology for wanting the best eduction system in the world and wanting the fullest access to be available to it regardless of the income of students. My generation benefitted from easy access to Higher Education and I believe it is necessary not merely for the well-being of students but also for the well-being of the country. We need to educate in order to grow.

I apologise for ever suggesting that the country could not afford this. There was always money available in the form of increased taxation. We were uniquely placed for making the case to the country that investment in our educational establishments and in our young people was an investment that Britain could not afford to avoid making.

Thirdly, I have heard that voices who say that we were not ready for government. Unfortunately, they were right. However, engaging in politics at the highest level teaches you hard lessons and the fact is that we are now a party of government and Britain needs a strong liberal force in parliament. Whether as a loyal opposition or whether we are in government, we need to bring creative liberal answers to the problems which beset us. However, it is clear that we will be unable to do this whilst the country does not trust us.

I take full responsibility for these mistakes. The people of the UK need our values. Many trust our values and many more will come to believe in what we stand for. However, this can only happen if trust can be rebuilt in the public sphere.

For these reasons, the time has come for change. I am sorry for the mistakes that I made. I know that a liberal Britain can only come about if I now step aside and allow other more trusted colleagues to put the case to the people. For this reason, I shall resign the party leadership and concentrate my efforts on retaining my Sheffield seat. I want a party I can feel proud of. I want a country I can feel proud of. And I commit myself to building a better future where the all the people of the UK are free to prosper.

Thank you.

Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

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Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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