''It is not going to be a question of us propping up (another party) but of us insisting on the changes only we advocate'' : Nick Clegg!

Before the General Election in May the Liberals were recording voting intentions in the polls of around 30%. On occasions they were above on occasions below, but they frequently came close second behind the Tories and above the Labour Party.

Most recently they have flat lined at 9% (with an historic low in Wales of 6%).

I suppose we all knew that Nick Clegg was a kind of right-wing Liberal, with a deal in common with David Cameron, extremely rich parents, very good public school, then Oxford, as a right.

But I always had the impression that, even if I didn’t agree with all that he said, his views had been carefully thought out by a razor sharp mind, unlike David Cameron who seemed to have very little of substance to offer in a rather woolly mind, minimal intellect and no real political grounding. Cameron was a Tory because that was what rich boys who went to Eton and Oxford were. Because he had connections with the palace it seemed reasonable that he would go into parliament (with a little push from said palace) and would end up in Cabinet and possibly be prime minister. Clegg, from a similar background, having already worked in both Brussels and Washington and being fluent in several languages ... had though his way into the Liberals, or so it seemed to me.

So what is Clegg’s game?


Even if he truly believes that the Tories’ economic and social policies will, in the long term, improve Britain from a Liberal point of view, and that in five years’ time we will all be thanking the Coalition for delivering us from evil, does he seriously think that this will reflect favourably upon the Liberals?

Here is a man who promised to fight to keep student fees in England at no more than £3,000 pa and who said that to double them to £6,000 would be a disaster, but who oversaw the tripling of fees within 6 months of being elected, to £9,000.

Here is a man who, as the picture showed, berated the Conservatives, whom he suspected of plotting to increase VAT, overseeing the increase in VAT within 7 months of taking office.

Here is a man who said that on voting reform described the AV system proposed by the Gordon Brown as ''a baby step in the right direction'', and said he would not settle for ''a miserable little compromise”, accepting that miserable little compromise when it is offered by the Tories, along with the title of Deputy Prime Minister. What happened, Mr Clegg, to the assertion that the very least the Liberal Democrats would settle for was the Jenkins’ Commission’s AV+ proposals?

And now what is happening with the scrapping of control orders which was a plank of Liberal policy. It seems that Nick has to back down in the face of opposition from lightweight Theresa Wellingtons.

So remind me Nick, what was it that you were insisting on? And how do you think it will feel to be the man who reduced the Liberal numbers in the next Commons to around the same level as Jeremy Thorpe had?