And another thing…

PITY poor Nick Clegg.

He is, first of all, leader of the LibDems. Also, he’s been finding it hard to attract any publicity. He is, after all, the only one of the three main party leaders with absolutely no chance whatever of being Prime Minister. Ever.

So that rather limits your options when it comes to seizing the agenda. In the summer he pretended that he wanted parliament to cancel its recess in order to get MPs’ expenses sorted out. He had a moderate hit with that one, so he’s tried the same thing again, by “demanding” (bless) that the Queen’s Speech is cancelled and that we spent the next six months wringing our hands in anguish (but he doesn’t want us to mention MEPs’ expenses scams, for some odd reason).

Yeah, we know that very little of the next legislative programme will make it onto the statute books before the general election, Mick – we read newspapers when we were at school as well; we know how the constitution works. Just get back in your box and concentrate on what LibDems do best: complaining about dog crap on the pavement then doing sod all about it.

And if you don’t feel like making conversation with a parliamentary under-secretary of state during the walk from the Commons to the Lords on Wednesday while Brown and Cameron discuss grown-up stuff at the front of the procession, why not just stay at home and write whateer you intend to say next time you appear on “Thought for the Day”?

THE MOST remarkable thing about Nick Clegg’s admission that none of his party’s policies are worth the organic recycled paper they’re written on is that anyone really cares.

Okay, so the LibDems’ commitment to abolishing tuition fees was always more about positioning in target marginal seats than about political principle, and it’s hardly a surprise that the policy has survived for less time than the average LibDem leader. But honestly, who cares? They’re only the LibDems, for goodness sake!

I’m reminded of Roy Hattersley’s brilliant quip about student politics: they’re so vicious because the stakes are so low.

LIBDEM leader Nick Clegg has once again stolen a march on the other party leaders over expenses, by demanding that any MP caught over-claiming should be lured to an island off the west coast of Scotland and ceremoniously burned inside a 20-feet high wicker man as a sacrifice to the fertility gods.

“This is such an obvious solution I can’t believe they haven’t thought of it before,” said Mr Clegg while deputy leader Vince Cable stood behind him urgently whispering in his ear to “shut up! In the name of all that’s holy, shut up!”

When asked who he meant by “they” Mr Clegg replied: “MPs, obviously.”

“But aren’t you an MP as well?” our reporter then asked.

Mr Clegg declined to comment any further.

NICK wasn’t at all sure how to break the news to Vince, who had just told his leader how excited he was at the prospect of his planned two weeks in Magaluf in August…

IT IS A truly pathetic sight, watching Nick Clegg desperately trying to win the PR battle over MPs’ expenses.

Is there anything the man wouldn’t say in order to grab a headline on this — or any other — issue?

“Let us bar the gates of Westminster and stop MPs leaving for their summer holidays until this crisis has been sorted out,” he screams in his Guardian column today. Yeah, okay, Nick, whatever you say. But what do you really want us to do? I mean, seriously?

I’m in a privileged position in that I’m on quite friendly terms with a number of Clegg’s MPs, and let me tell you: their opinion of him isn’t much higher than mine. In some cases it’s lower.

I admit he’s had a good scandal. His calling for the Speaker to go was pivotal, even though I have not an ounce of doubt that his choosing to adopt that position was nothing more than the most shameful and cynical of political manoeuvring, so scared was he of losing the initiative to the Tories.

In this frenetic atmosphere I know it must be difficult for any of the party leaders to risk being seen as at all complacent, and I’m sure none of them is. But if the existing system had been put in place years ago, virtually none of the excesses we’ve seen would have taken place. All claims will be published quarterly, there are now limits on how much can be claimed on rent and mortgage interest, furniture can no longer be claimed for, husband and wives who are MPs cannot claim second home allowances on separate homes… it’s all common sense and in the short term, it will pretty much guarantee that there can be no more doubtful claims, or at least, not without public and media scrutiny.

(Personally, I would add at least one extra change: that an MP’s second home as designated to the Fees Office must also be designated as such to Customs and Revenue, but I shall propose that in my own submission to Kelly’s inquiry.)

And talking of Kelly, Clegg is deliberately ignoring the fact that a root-and-branch reform of MPs’ allowances and expenses is already underway. He’s already committed to embracing all Kelly’s findings.

So what exactly do you want to lock the doors for, Nick? Are you going to force us to stay in the chamber so you can show us a slideshow of your etchings?

ON REFLECTION, perhaps my last post was a tad ill-judged.

Please bear in mind that I was still in shock after the vote, and probably wallowing a bit in self-pity. But in the harsh light of day I accept that rather than try to score cheap political points out of Clegg’s and Cameron’s alliance, I should simply have either conceded that we screwed up on this one, or shut up altogether.

Apologies.

THERE’S no doubt that the defeat on the Gurkhas was a humiliation for the government and for those of us who supported it.

And there’s no doubt that for Nick Clegg — who, to his credit, has been campaigning for the Gurkhas for a long time — and his party, this is a particularly important moment. Today was a chance for the LibDems to present themselve as the real opposition to Labour, the real alternative.

And what do we get instead? Clegg sharing the limelight — and the credit — with that perpetual Johnny-come-lately, David Cameron! 

To all of you who are thinking at this very moment: “Well, good for Clegg! Opposition unity is so much more important than individual party advancement,” I have this to say: bolloks!

Do you know what happened today? The government was defeated — for the first time since it came to power in 1997 — on an opposition motion. A LibDem motion, to be precise, and on the back of a LibDem-led campaign. The Tories were nowhere in this debate. They jumped on the bandwagon when they saw the electoral potential, but it’s not something Cameron was particularly exercised about until today.

So when the victor was enjoying his well-earned spoils, what does he do? He lets Cameron elbow his way in to share the glory!

What a mug!

Ask yourself this: had this been a Conservative motion and a Conservative-led campaign, would Cameron have been pictured today with Joanna Lumley and Nick Clegg? 

Exactly.

KERRON Cross gives an admirable kicking to Nick “Do you fancy coming up to my place to see my collection of Liberal general election rosettes? There’s a prize for being number 30″ Clegg over on his blog.

But surely Nick couldn’t seriously have expected an invitation to meet Obama during his visit? My teenage son’s a big Obama fan as well and if Clegg was going to meet him I would have had to insist that my son did too. And a bloke who used to be my intern would quite like to meet him.

According to Kerron, Nick threw a strop and phoned up David Miliband to complain about the perceived snub.

Now here’s the thing that bothers me about all this: why would the leader of the largest minor party in the Commons willfully humiliate himself by admitting publicly that he was put out in the first place? Wouldn’t a better response have been, once he had been told what his proper place was in the scheme of things, simply to have accepted it and affected a blasé indifference to the whole thing?

Instead he’s drawn attention to his (and his party’s) lack of importance. And that is not the behaviour of a stud, Nick.

Iain Dale interviews Keith Simpson and me following Wednesday’s PMQs.