‘I support the prime minister on a full range of government policy,” said Nick Clegg a little louder than strictly necessary at deputy prime minister’s questions. Cue laughter, some of it possibly genuine, from both sides of the house. “I don’t understand the hilarity,” the Liberal Democrat leader continued, his smile widening.
Clegg is a changed man. Late last year, he appeared to be shrinking daily and it seemed he would soon need help to climb on to the front benches. Now he has returned to almost full-size.
Maybe not with the messianic passion he had a few years back, but with rather more wisdom. The darkest hour has passed. He has gazed on the ashes of his political career and is still standing. He has passed through denial, anger, bargaining and depression to a state of gallows humour. It may not be exactly acceptance but it’s not far off. Come May, something else will turn up.
The timing is cruel. Just as he hurtles ever faster towards the margins of significance, he gives the impression of being, for the first time in years, a politician of something approaching gravitas. His tragedy is that no one is now listening to him. Not even in the Commons. He is teased and bullied by MPs on all sides.
On Monday, Clegg said the Lib Dems would give the Tories a heart and Labour a spine: inevitably, on Tuesday, the knives were out to extract the relevant body parts and exsanguinate Clegg. “Can he tell us where is the heart in the bedroom tax,” asked Harriet Harman, shadow deputy prime minister. “Where is the heart in making low income people worse off, and where is the heart in giving tax cuts to millionaires while more people go to food banks? If there is a heart in this government, it is a heart of stone.”
It would have sounded more convincing if she had said this with some heart herself, rather than read it off the teleprompter embedded behind her eyelids.
Clegg may have sold his soul long ago but he wasn’t about to hand over anything else without a fight.
“I will tell you what I think is heartless and incompetent,” he said. “Going on a prawn cocktail charm offensive to the City of London in the runup to the last election and allowing the banks to get away with blue murder.” Harman smiled nervously trying to make it appear as if this was the response she had been expecting.
Having seen off his opposite number, Clegg was ready to kill his lesser critics with a mixture of spirited indulgence – “I do not want to comment on the prospects of Shipley splitism and separatism” – and earnest congratulation. After Tory Tim Loughton had laboured over a contrived Wizard of Oz non-gag concluding with “… or is he the scarecrow who needs a new brain?”, Clegg clapped his hands. “Very well done to Dim Tim for remembering such a long and difficult sentence,” he enthused.
He left his politest gesture till last, remembering to congratulate Labour’s Anne McGuire on her DBE in the New Year honours list even though he, like everyone else, couldn’t quite recall what she had done to merit it.
Nothing in Clegg’s coalition life became him like the leaving it.
