The Sunday Times has confirmed the Slog story of two weeks ago: in a hung Parliament, Gordon Brown would be unacceptable to Nick Clegg

A source ‘close to Nick Clegg’ confirmed yesterday that the Liberal Democrats would not, in the event of a hung Parliament, support a Labour Government led by Gordon Brown. Also confirmed was our intelligence that Libdems would not take Cabinet seats. We can confirm in turn that the Sunday Times source close to Nick Clegg is Nick Clegg.

The Slog’s Libdem source (who is not Nick Clegg) further confirmed yesterday that Nick Clegg would vastly prefer not to help a dead horse. However, if New Labour remains the largest Party in the Commons, Mr Clegg still faces a difficult decision.

“If Nick supported the Tories as a smaller Party” said our trusty Mole, “the grass-roots would flay him alive. But the majority of pro-LibDem voters in the real world would support the move. And if he says ‘no deal with Gordon Brown’ to the larger Party – and they refuse to do it – he could be seen to be both undemocratic and bringing on a currency crisis”.

Happily, as another source told us over a week ago, there will be no hesitation in removing the Prime Minister. The Anyone But Gordon tendency is, as we’ve said all along, alive, well, and just waiting for the dagger cupboard to be unlocked.

Where things might get sticky is if the candidate favoured by Whitehall and Mandelson (David Miliband) finds himself going to see the Monarch in the teeth of Labour folks who are a tad less New than him. And anyway, he could only be a caretaker: the Labour Constitution would demand a formal election contest. Not very reassuring for the credit agencies out there in search of decisive action.

But The Slogger sticks to his view that there will not be a hung Parliament. I realise I was wrong about Gordon making it to May 6th; but then I underestimated the spinal damage within Labour’s ranks. And I also fess up to being wrong about the lead narrowing; but then I underestimated just how crap the Tory leadership could be. I will try to downgrade my Party credit ratings in line with the markets from now on.

What I do think is that Cameron can’t carry on being this crap (I think) and before the Day itself (if strong decisive Gordon ever names it) more lies and character faults in the Labour leadership will have come to light.

Although after Fleet Street’s response to The Slog’s MoD numbers piece over the weekend, I’m beginning to wonder if anyone’s awake any more. But then, it’s probably just us crying wolf again.