There was a fair bit of confusion on the internet last night as, for once, the BBCNews Channel scooped everyone (except the paper itself) by showing today’s Independent front page.

‘CLEGG:’ ran the headline, ‘MY TESTS FOR COOPERATION’. He was, needless to say, talking about an exam he proposed to set the major Parties, in order to decipher their degree of Libdem Onmessageness.

The Politicshome site grabbed the story within minutes, but didn’t have any links via which to expand it. On the main site, it said there were four demands. No, said the next page, there were six. But in a small panel at the top of that page, it was alleged there were eight. There were thus four no six no eight…because you see, nobody expected the Cleggish Inquisition.

The Pythons must be pissing themselves this morning. I too find myself giggling at visions of David Cameron being stretched on a rack, while Vince Cable (dressed in red Papal uniform) asks him “Are you a heretic, or do you renounce the sins of the Devil Friedman, and vow allegiance to the Cleggorian catechism?”

With nothing else available, Politicshome had to stick up an Iain Martin WSJ blog about Nick Clegg – but this served only to confuse matters further. First of all it quoted Nick as having said (believing the idea to be original) that the bankers represented exactly the same threat today as the Trade Unions had in 1978. In the longstanding Libdem tradition, this sounded both left and right wing at the same time, but it isn’t original at all: Perry Worsthorne wrote precisely the same thing in a Spectator piece two years ago.

Martin nevertheless persevered, concluding that ‘Clegg is thus making a quite traditional liberal case for genuine free markets’, although the ‘thus’ part of the logic completely eluded me. He recorded Clegg’s desire to ‘compel companies and industries to serve their customers rather than it being the other way round’, but this has as much Stateism about it as it does Friedmanism. Perhaps Iain hasn’t yet grasped that, if you’re in charge of the Libdems, there is a somewhat eclectically hairy grassroots to consider: and these make it imperative to be a sort of leftly rightish Party for much of the time….especially in public.

However, the real problem with the article was that it lacked not only any reference to post-Election demands, but also any sign at all of the numbers involved. It was like I imagine it might have been if Moses had stopped for a pee halfway through taking down God’s Commandments, and been asked by a persistent Sun journalist “Look, how many are we talking here?” There would’ve been a Jewish shrug, followed by, “So you think I’m in charge here maybe? They’re his commandments, not mine”. Elated, the tabloid hack dashes back down to the Israelites yelling “It’s ten! It’s ten!”

This is the problem with breaking internet news: the big thing is to make it look as though – even though the subject’s only said something three minutes ago – you just know what they said in full, because you have the inside track. I’d imagine there are some unholy tricks one could play on an overly keen night Editor flailing around for confirmation of content under such conditions. And I bet several cub reporters were sent hurtling over to the Indie’s offices in order to grab a copy as the paper hit the streets in the early hours of this morning.

Even then, the Editor’s nightmare is that Nick has been showing several hands and floating one helluva lot of heavy demands down the political river over the last month. In turn, the Guardian, Telegraph and Times have run online pieces saying how Clegg had ‘spelt out’ what his demands would be. Spelling out is not how you’d describe what the Libdem leader is alleged to have said once you’ve read all the interviews he’s given on the subject. The only conclusion of any certainty one could reach is that Nicholas will be inside-out vis-a-vis the next Cabinet – with a regular debrief coming out, and lots of demands going in, depending on whether it’s a Tory or Labour Cabinet.

By this morning, the Libdem leader had added £10 billion to his demands: ‘Gimme de money or Liddle Osborne gets it’ perhaps. But in the event, it wasn’t a bad idea: let’s show the markets we mean business by clearing off ten billion in the first year. Except that wasn’t this the man a day earlier who had accused the Tories of scaremongering about the markets? And wasn’t this the man proposing to pay for it by spending cuts rather than taxing the rich? And isn’t this a bit out of step with what Vince Cable wants to do?

If it’s Labour (he asserted) then Gordon will have to go, although perhaps not entirely. And as he has no desire to revive a corpse, Nick’d be happy to let the Tories have a go and thus hang themselves. But if that seems a little irresponsible in the light of debt and currency affairs, Nick Clegg has given the markets an assurance that he’ll behave responsibly.

Phew. All that remains is for The Slogger to speculate on what the demands might be; and playing safe, I shall plump for five as follows:

1. Proportional Representation isn’t enough. We must have out of proportional representation – the political equivalent of affirmative action.
2. The Chilcot Inquiry will become the Galloway Inquiry.
3. Everything must be more Green than Jonathon Porrit’s sweater. Even wind turbines will be the subject of a debate about whether wind is renewable. (Winds get tired too, you know).
4. A first ever written Constitution will enshrine the principle of complete equality of blame for everything to be shared between the Labour and Conservative Parties in perpetuity.
5. Libdems would reserve the right to be in the Cabinet if it all goes swimmingly, and out of office if it all goes tits-up.

Ultimately, the great advantage enjoyed by the Cleggish Inquisition is the element of surprise. It’s not just that nobody expects it: it’s that nobody has the faintest bloody idea what it might ask for, and how this might change from day to day. So I should maybe, after all, leave the last word to Nick himself….who reserves the right for this not to be his last word:

“We are not here to play games with other parties”