Je regret rien

Nick Clegg may be telling the Independent – and himself – how future years will see his Judas act in a different light, but the on-going story at the moment for a relentless media is the departure of Cleggmania in just a spectacular a fashion as it arrived.

The Liberal Democrat leader has gone from shining star to shithouse in just six months and in the same paper, John Rentoul recounts at length how Clegg’s judgement calls have turned out to be just as bad as Cameron’s in many cases.

The writer, like many other political commentators, expresses astonishment at how Clegg has so quickly alienated the very same middle-income, middling age groups that so recently represented their core support and then done the dirty on his own parliamentary party by pretending they could all abstain, only to admit at the last minute that the leadership intended to vote for its own policy after all.

Such duplicity brings its own inevitable rewards and it was riveting to watch NUS president Aaron Porter appear on live TV the other day to state that the Lib Dem leader had refused to answer invitations to publicly debate the merits of the revised fees package. The fact that the Lib Dem machine has been left semi-paralysed by a student organisation that has effectively combined counter-argument with direct action is lost on neither the pundits nor political opponents.

But few see the upsurge of discontent as culminating in anything more than a further rubbishing of Clegg and Cable’s tarnished reputations. The coalition will not split or even seriously fragment over this subject – and it will certainly not happen at Clegg’s behest. Realistically speaking, he has nowhere else to go other than the bed that he has made for himself for the next five years. The same goes for his forlorn looking party.