Nick Clegg’s knighthood is just a reward for failure

ARISE Sir Nick Clegg. It’s a mystery to everyone on both the Left and the Right what exactly former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Nick has done to earn his gong in the New Year’s Honours List. Certainly there was a brief – very brief – period when he appeared on the televised leaders’ debate in the run-up to the election of 2010 and seemed to impress the country. “I agree with Nick” was the catchphrase at the time.

But since then nobody has found much to agree with him about. Then he was promising to scrap tuition fees because, as he said: “You can’t build a future on debt.”

The party’s main political broadcast was titled, “Say goodbye to broken promises” though it should have been called, “Say hello to broken promises” because immediately after the election – which saw him form a coalition with the Tories – he said he had no choice but to go back on his word on the fees.

And since then? He spent a period larging it as deputy prime minister in the coalition government. But in 2015 he resigned as Liberal Democrat leader after his party was all but destroyed in the general election. The Lib Dems ended up with only eight MPs, down from 57 in 2010.

Having wrecked his own party he has, since the EU referendum of 2016, devoted his energies to attempting to undermine the result of the vote and derail Brexit.

It is very hard to see how any of his activities have earned him a knighthood. Or perhaps it’s merely a consolation prize for being a political has-been on the wrong side of history.