Picture via @JonathanHaynes.
You can see that the Tory press are running scared at the moment, aiming to slur the Lib Dems something chronic, as if the Labour party have been forgotten entirely. I can’t remember when these papers even mentioned the Lib Dems, let alone dedicated their front pages to attacking them. I guess a sign of the times…
As ever, the Daily Mail story is a crock of shit. It’s based on a article Clegg wrote in 2002 whilst an MEP, detailing a school trip to Germany and how prejudicial some of his classmates were to their hosts.
I think it’s pretty well-written, and it also details how two Germans were hounded out of their jobs in Britain by British co-workers antagonising them and being downright racist. Pretty shameful behaviour from those Brits, really.
Of course, the Mail twists the article completely to make it sound as if Clegg is ashamed of being British, or that he is somehow anti-British. The headline “Clegg in Nazi slur on UK: ‘Our delusions of grandeur’ at winning war are greater cross to bear than German guilt” is completely wrong. What he actually said is:
All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still.
He’s saying that the British are letting this whole racism and prejudice spread in a bit of an underhand manner, and that no-one is saying that it’s probably quite wrong to maintain this habit of harking back to a war that finished 60 years ago, and that nobody ever wants to see repeated.
Which is a fair comment, to my mind.
Naturally, the Daily Mail takes this to mean “I hate Britain, and Germany is my BFF 4EVARRR!”, when all he’s done is point out that Germany’s economy is stronger and more productive than ours (measurable statistics). How dare he use facts?!
Oh, and the “grandson of Winston Churchill” they quote as being offended by comparisons between his grandfather and Clegg? A Tory MP. What a fucking surprise that he didn’t agree with Clegg!
And, as ever with Daily Mail articles, the paragraph which shows their whole story to be nothing but fear-mongering and falsehoods is left until the very end:
Mr Clegg’s spokesman said: ‘Mail readers who see the article in full will realise that it was written in the context of an incident of anti-German prejudice. He remains against prejudice in any form.’
Oh, and remind me to post next time the Daily Mail claims that the BBC is biased…