Clegg set to attack Tories for ‘obsessive’ behaviour

NICK Clegg will add to David Cameron’s woes today, accusing parts of the To r y party of being “obsessed” about Europe and gay marriage.

The Deputy Prime Minister’s comments risk further inflaming the row over allegations that a close political ally of Mr Cameron called Tory activists “mad, swivel eyed loons”.

The Conservative leader’s attempts to draw a line under the controversy by writing to local associations earlier this week failed spectacularly.

Within hours of the letter being sent, Conservative MP Gary Streeter risked inflaming tensions further by describing Tory eurosceptics as “swivelled-eyed”.

Reports also emerged that a Conservative minister had described backbench Tory MPs as “mad”.

And BBC presenter Jeremy Paxman said he had heard senior figures use similar terms to “mad, swivel-eyed loons”.

Activists themselves warned Mr Cameron that they had not been bought off by his letter.

Robert Woollard, chairman of the Conservative Grassroots group, said the gesture was “too little, too late ... What we are asking for is decency, some respect, some regard for our view.”

Today Mr Clegg will attack sections of the party on their recent behaviour over gay marriage and Europe.

The LibDem leader will condemn backbenchers “consumed by game-playing” over both issues.

Tory MPs have spent recent weeks “disappearing into a parliamentary rabbit warren, obsessing over this new tactic or that new trick,” he will warn.

The speech is designed to outline the LibDem leader’s commitment to staying in Coalition until 2015.

But in a move that will do little to endear him to many or dinary Conservative members, he will say that after the rows of recent days and weeks “anyone watching would be forgiven for asking: what are these politicians doing?”

Mr Clegg, who will insist he is “absolutely committed to this Coalition lasting until 2015”, will also say he will not be dragged to the right by Mr Cameron.

But he will rule out any formal Coalition split in the run up to the next General Election. “Some commentators think it would be clever to duck out six months early. But that doesn’t make any sense,” he will say. “The idea that the Liberal Democrats could suddenly win back those people who have never liked us going into government with the Conservatives is nonsense.”