There is ample scope for questioning Nick Clegg’s political integrity

Questions about the moral character of Nick Clegg have hardly gone away since he broke his promise not to raise tuition fees. Some have defended the deputy prime minister, noting that breaking promises is an inevitable feature of politics and joining coalition government meant not all the Lib Dem manifesto pledges were realistic. But by making such an unbending statement in the first place and by seeking to benefit from it electorally, Clegg violated the reasonable expectations of a significant proportion of his voters, a decision which displays a blatant disregard for some of the most basic principles of representative politics that we expect politicians to take seriously in a democracy, writes Edward Hall.