born on state highway 1

It’s been said in the aftermath of the British election, and subsequent parliamentary coalition, that the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg has led himself and his party astray by jumping into bed with David Cameron’s Tories. After all, the Liberal Democrats snapped up plenty of estranged Labour voters who now feel even more marginalized because their vote led to the dread Tories becoming the head of Government in Britain. Add into the mix that the Labour Party formed out of marginalized Liberal voters (the Liberal party, now defunct, joined with the Social Democrat Party to form the Liberal Democrats) at the turn of the 20th Century and one would assume that the natural path for the Liberal Democrats to take would be to join into a coalition with Labour. But we are here, now, in late May 2010 where Nick Clegg is now Deputy Prime Minister of a Conservative-led government. However, this is not as strange as it would seem.

First thing to consider is the agenda of the Liberal Democrat Party. The Lib Dems run on a platform of social liberalism, which one would assume would be diametrically opposed to the policies of the Conservatives. But you must throw it all into context. Since the September 11th attacks in New York, and July 7th bombings in London, the Labour Party have run a country which is slowly becoming more and more socially repressive. From illegally invading other countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, where human rights and civil liberty abuses on the local populace have been rife and of great magnitudes, to domestic legislation which exceeds – in terms of penetration – the civil liberties abuses that Bush’s Patriot Act placed on the domestic populace in the US. Between Tony Blair and usurped Prime Minister Gordon Brown the Labour Party the United Kingdom slowly turned to an Airstrip One-like dystopia (see 1984). CCTV cameras everywhere, ID cards which need to be carried at all times, a relaxation of arrest regulations for Police and an increase in the Police’s ability to detain suspects – whether evidenced or not. For a Liberal Democrat with an eye towards social liberalism this would be totally unacceptable, and the Tories have offered a review of these repressive measures.

But also, interestingly enough, Nick Clegg shares more in common with David Cameron in background than one would expect. As we all know, or at least all should know, Cameron is a direct descendant of King William IV (great × 5 grandfather) and his mistress Dorothea Jordan (and thus fifth cousin, twice removed of Queen Elizabeth II) – although as an illegitimate royal descendant, Cameron is not in the line of succession to the British throne. Cameron was raised in a fabulously wealthy family as heir to a massive family fortune, attending only private schools like Eton is his formative years and becoming a member of Oxford University’s most exclusive trust-fund baby club. As is fitting for his party’s policies, Cameron is the ultimate trust-fund baby with strong ties to the aristocracy.

Nick Clegg and David Cameron strange bedfellows? Not if truth has anything to do with it.

Clegg’s background, which would seem anathema to his party and their mainly lower middle-class and working-class voters, is not too dissimilar. His father, Nicholas Clegg CBE, is chairman of United Trust Bank, and is a trustee of The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. Clegg’s paternal grandmother, Kira von Engelhardt, was a Baroness from Imperial Russia, whose aristocratic family fled the Bolsheviks after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Clegg’s great-great-grandfather, the Ukrainian nobleman Ignaty Zakrevsky, was attorney general of the imperial Russian senate. His great-great aunt was the writer, Baroness Moura Budberg. Clegg was educated at the private Caldicott School at Farnham Royal in South Buckinghamshire, and later at the private Westminster School in London. He then went on to attend Cambridge University, where – and this may come as some shock – he joined the Cambridge University Conservative Association between 1986 and 1987, with contemporary membership records citing an “N. Clegg” of Robinson College. (At the time, Clegg was the only person of that name at Robinson.) Large trust fund behind him? Check. Privileged upbringing? Check. Private-school education? Check. Member of right-wing groups at the most prestigious universities in Britain? Check. Even royal (though not necessarily English) blood? Check.

It should come as no surprise that these two men would see eye-to-eye more than either would with the Scottish son of a preacher man, Gordon Brown.

Add into the mix a politician’s lust for power, coming mainly from the sexual lust that it arouses in them (I’m sure more than once a British politician has ejaculated at the sight of William Gladstone’s portrait in the House of Commons), and you can easily see how the British coalition was not a strange fit between two opposed ideological sparring partners, but more a simple banding together of trust-fund babies. But public perception is what counts, and both parties may find themselves the losers from this coalition in the long-run. Unless, of course, the Liberal Democrats really had the support of true social liberals, rather than just the disenfranchised ex-Labourites. Only time will tell.