NICK Clegg really hasn’t been very lucky in his short time as Liberal leader, has he? First there was his wafer-thin majority in the leadership ballot which barely gave him a mandate. Then there was the GQ interview which ended up labelling him some kind of unlikely lothario. Then there was the sudden reappearance of a number of postal votes that had gone astray in the leadership election and which may well have changed the result of his election had they been counted. Then he couldn’t quite remember how much the state pension was.
And now this.
(I could also add his strange obsession with the Speaker’s ceremonial wig which, Clegg has insisted in two recent interviews, is a sign that the Commons needs modernisation. Except the Speaker hasn’t worn a wig since the days of Bernard Weatherill. Never mind.)
I remember, back in 1984, reading Robert Harris’s biography of Neil Kinnock, which concluded (over-optimistically, even then) that despite having an electoral mountain to climb, Kinnock had the valuable commodity of luck. Indeed he did, it turned out, but only the kind of luck any politician could well do without. It looks like Calamity is similarly blessed.
And that dull, mirthless chortle you hear in the distance is Chris Huhne…
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Thursday 25 September 2008 at 11:47 pm
The best bit of luck we had was not having Kinnock as PM, but now we have Brown so our luck has run out.
Friday 26 September 2008 at 9:15 am
We are continuously bombarded with unsolicited phone calls, one more makes very little difference.
Following an excerpt on BBC News, I watched the Traffic Cops episode last night.
Shocking, bizarre. All those who came under these cops scrutiny were, as the BBC put it “overseas visitors”.
Two swedish sisters, possibly high on drugs causing multiple accidents on the M6
Two illegal Iranians wandering along the motorway.
Another man, living ‘under the radar’ in this country for 10 years, ’slightly’ overstaying a 6 mth visa.
Another speeding on the motorway at 112 mph,over the alcohol limit.
Another with defective,bulging front tyre, no British driving licence.
Multiply these incidents over the country as a whole I begin to understand why, when last time I dialled 999 to report drunken youths on mainline railway tracks it took 3 days for the police to arrive.
I wonder how much of the blame can be place at the door of Labours failed immigration policies.