Panic Stations

Those of us who voted Liberal Democrat in 2010 under the impression that the party had some vague interest in liberal democracy may take some bleak, vindictive consolation in the sight of the Deputy Conservative leader moving from sour sanctimony to full-fledged panic. (I almost wrote bowel-clenching panic, but of course he would need guts to suffer that.) Only twenty-three per cent of Clegg's constituents voted Conservative four and a half years ago, so Clegg's enthusiastic support for a hard-right, corporate-fundamentalist administration of sniggering schoolboys, gormless grotesques and beady-eyed psychopaths must have come as a bit of a shock for the fifty-three per cent who voted Liberal Democrat. The Labour candidate has been running an energetic campaign, and at present the two parties are neck and neck in the polls; so Clegg has been taking two days a week away from his poodling duties at Westminster in order to renew his vows with the electorate. Labour has neither confirmed nor denied that it is making a special effort to unseat him; indeed, one could argue that in the event of another hung parliament Labour would find it easier to use Clegg than anyone unduly afflicted with either principles or popularity.