When Sky News are running a live feed, which is currently showing flares being thrown at police horses and angry crowds attempting to tip over linked metal fences only to be beaten back by heavy black batons, it’s incredibly hard to write a blog. We just had to, though. When Jon Snow mentions your book on Channel 4 News, you can’t very well ignore it.
Turn on the TV and you will see that there is conflict in the streets. After all, the streets are kind of where these things happen. However, we don’t really expect there to be conflict in the Headquarters of the Liberal Democrat Party (we’re sure there are some political commentators who might find that statement laughably simple). When Jon Snow interviewed Nick Clegg yesterday about his party’s promises regarding tuition fees it all got a bit heated.
Snow introduced the questioning by citing the Biteback title 22 Days In May, which is written by David Laws, the ex-Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Lib Dem MP for Yeovil. He quoted a passage from the book which, as Snow said, was evidence that even before the election Clegg’s party had little faith in their promise to abolish tuition fees.
They then kind of started shouting at each other, as Clegg answered with “David Laws can speak for himself” and Snow retaliating by saying “the ambition was abolition, not tripling it”. We didn’t mean to start a fight but, as evidenced today, it does make great television.
David Laws’s 22 Days In May contains more revelations from behind the doors of Lib Dem HQ and is available here in paperback and e-book format for £9.99 and £4.60, respectively.