Daily Mail

When the going gets tough, Clegg clears off

LITTLEJOHN

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Even those who don’t really follow politics may have noticed there was something fairly important going on at Westminste­r this week. the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement had been trailed in advance and attracted quite a few headlines.

Changes in stamp duty, higher income tax thresholds, a ‘Google tax’ on multinatio­nal corporatio­ns, business rates reform. not so much a mini-Budget as a manifesto for the next general election.

When George Osborne took to his hind legs, even serial absentee MPs packed into the Commons chamber. It was standing room only. BBC2 postponed coverage of the UK snooker championsh­ips to bring us wall-to-wall Andrew neil and his all-star posse, live from College Green.

there was, however, one notable absentee: nick Clegg. Where could the Cleggster be? Was he off sick with a nasty bout of ebola? had he and Senora Clegg sneaked the kids out of school for a cut-price skiing holiday?

he can’t have forgotten. It’s been in the diary for ages. his civil servants would have reminded him, perhaps with a prominent Post-it note on his red box or a knot in his hanky.

Clegg is, after all, Deputy Prime Minister. So you might have expected him to be sitting alongside Call Me Dave, radiating pride at the Lib Dems’ towering contributi­on to the economic success story being rammed down Labour’s throat by Osborne.

But he was nowhere to be found. Search parties had drawn a blank. Perhaps it was time to scramble Scotland Yard’s Missing Persons Squad. For all we knew, he could have been captured by ISIS and was being held hostage, part of a prisoner exchange negotiatio­n involving British jihadists arrested on their return from the frontline in Syria.

then, just as the SAS was about to start crashing through the windows of Islamist safe houses, we received the news that Clegg was alive and well. Panic over. he turned up on twitter — where else? — posing for a selfie with some students in the West Country.

CLEGG hadn’t forgotten the Autumn Statement, he had just discovered a more pressing engagement, meeting the people in a marginal Lib Dem constituen­cy. As he explained: ‘I’ve spent four years dutifully sitting on the green benches. this year I thought it would be nice to get out of the Westminste­r Bubble.’

But why choose one of the most important set-piece occasions in the political calendar to take an away-day to Cornwall?

Apparently, Clegg thought it would harm his poll ratings still further if he was seen to be too close to Cameron and Osborne. Last time anyone looked, the Lib Dems were languishin­g on six per cent.

But that was only part of the story. Further investigat­ions revealed that the Lib Dems had been fighting like rats in a sack.

At the Cabinet meeting on Wednes- day, there was an almighty bust-up between Business Secretary vince Cable and Chief treasury Secretary Danny Alexander. Cable is said to have ‘erupted’ over Desperate Dan’s support for further public spending cuts. Caught in the crossfire, Clegg thought it safer to head for the hills.

Regular readers will be aware that this column has never bought in to the Cult of Cable, so assiduousl­y promoted by the Boys In the Bubble — who treat his every utterance as a pearl of wisdom. I’ve always thought he suffers from a severe case of Chauncey Gardner Syndrome.

vinny has never made any secret of the fact that he thinks he’d make a better Chancellor than Osborne — or anyone else in the world, come to that. he also makes it crystal clear that he’d be happier in coalition with Labour.

In which case, if he’d any decency he wouldn’t have accepted Government office and all the pay and perks which go with it. he could have retired to the back benches and carped from there, instead of constantly underminin­g collective responsibi­lity from the chauffeurd­riven comfort of his taxpayerfu­nded ministry in Whitehall.

Still, that’s the Lib Dems for you. As I have always maintained, they’re a franchise, not a proper party — a Rag, tag and Bobtail army of political misfits with their own egos and agendas. With five- and-a-half-months to go before the election, Clegg seems to have given all his MPs carte blanche to take the rest of this Parliament off to go full-time campaignin­g to save their seats.

At this point, though, it would only be fair to put in a word for Danny Alexander. When he arrived in Government he was mocked as a wet-behind-the-ears ingenue, whose only experience of the real world was as a press officer for the Cairngorms. Regular mention was made of his resemblanc­e to Beaker, from the Muppets.

BUT he’s proved himself anything but a Muppet. Alongside Cable and Clegg, a duplicitou­s pair of self- regarding chancers, Alexander often seems like the only grown-up Lib Dem in the Cabinet.

he has knuckled down to the task of working alongside the tories and this week was sitting in plain sight next to Osborne, later defending the Coalition’s record in a series of interviews.

Meanwhile, Cable carried on carping and Clegg did his Lord Lucan act, proving yet again why they are unfit to occupy their exalted positions.

ever since they entered Coalition, the Lib Dems have been part of the problem, not part of the solution. they’ve reneged on solemn promises, such as revising constituen­cy boundaries, for selfpreser­vation reasons.

And they’ve obstructed genuine austerity measures which could have been passed earlier in the Parliament, simply because they feared it would make them unpopular.

how did that work out, then? Six per cent tells its own story.

Clegg is now only concerned with salvaging his own image. Yesterday, on his weekly phone-in on LBC Radio, he was even defending the repulsive hypocrite Russell Brand — presumably in the hope of attracting the votes of some of Brand’s juvenile followers. (these would be the same students who have deserted the Lib Dems over tuition fees.)

It was revealed this week that Brand pays a staggering £75,000 a year rent to a company based in a tax-haven, just so he can be seen to slum it in a hovel in fashionabl­e-but-horrible hoxton. Yet he campaigns noisily for low rents and poses as an anti-capitalist, anti-tax avoidance ‘activist’, while shelling out a small fortune to a landlord registered in the virgin Islands.

nothing wrong with that, Clegg told host nick Ferrari: ‘ I, for instance, am a passionate believer in prison reform, but I’ve never been in prison.’

‘there’s still time,’ said Ferrari.

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