Forum Topic

Political squirming

When will people in high positions in politics and broadcasting realize that protecting your highly-placed chums when they've committed crimes or misdemeanours will always backfire on you in the end? It must be something to do with the psychological makeup of politicians, perhaps their sense of entitlement and their habit of never quite speaking the truth in a straightforward way, that causes them to do this over and over again.  Why doesn't Clegg just own up? He was told about this guy and he did nothing about it because he was a mate of his and the women who made the accusations were of a lower rank in the hierarchy. It happened at the Beeb, it happens in hospitals and now it's happening in the Lib-Dems. Come clean and tell the truth, Nick - you'll feel all the better for it.

Colin Jordan ● 4458d3 Comments

I saw that and would concede that it was a very ill-advised thing for him to say. You would have thought the Lib Dems would have had robust procedures in place already after the Cyril Smith case.

David Parker ● 4457d

Nick Clegg has already admitted that he thinks an enquiry will find that party procedures will be found to be inadequate so by your yardstick he is culpable.The Tories in London are not without portly senior party figures who have trouble keeping their hands to themselves but their procedure seems to be to promote them.

Mick Higgins ● 4457d

As far as I am aware Lord Reynard hasn't actually been convicted of any crime at this stage. The correct thing for anybody in a position authority to do is make sure that their organisation has robust procedures in place to make sure that workplace harassment doesn't happen or if it does they are properly investigated. If the Liberal Democrats don't have these then Nick Clegg is culpable. However, what he should most certainly not do is interfere in a case once it is in progress. This could undermine the whole process to the detriment of both parties. He probably was given legal advice that he couldn't sack Reynard while the complaint was still going through the system.Politics is an unseemly business but seeking to exploit this case to score points is perhaps sinking too low. Most people will wait until they have some verifiable facts before reaching an opinion on what happened.

David Parker ● 4458d