Clegg…just another politico with a helmet on the end?

Until about a month ago, I had Nick Clegg in the pigeon-hole marked ‘technocrat opportunist Blair III’. But it’s very crowded in that particular coop, so Nick has decided to get out and be something else. Whether this was wise or not remains to be seen.

The first thing the LibDem leader did was to get himself a marginally brutalist crewcut, quite possibly executed by the same bloke who mowed the turf for yesterday’s FA Cup Semi-final at Wembley: if advice was bouncing off Clegg before, then these days it’s slipping off his hair. Probably, he had the hair done to look a bit more ‘in yer face’, a phrase that sums up everything I loathe about British culture.

Having decided to walk this walk, Nick has also moved swiftly to remove any manners he had previously pretended. Yesterday he called the Tory marriage tax-break from Cameron ‘patronising drivel’, and then went on to give a speech in which he noted that he didn’t ‘find the Queen half as offensive as Gordon Brown’. There goes the married monarchist vote.

Nick Clegg has become the man abandoning soundbites in favour of, well, just bites. In the 1970s there was a Leeds United defender called Norman Hunter, a well-named man famous for tackling from behind two hours after the ball had left the scene. Leeds fans used to shout ‘Norman bites yer leg’. Clogger Clegg is heading in the same direction, but with one major difference.

For Nick wants to be the referee. Not the sort of ref who blows his whistle, but rather one who adds to the spectacle by kicking any player doing something of which he disapproves. It’s an original approach to political football, but guaranteed to mean the game ends in anarchic mayhem – which, of course, may well be what the LibDems want.

A couple of months ago, Clegg played a blinder in getting Brown in front of Chilcot. He made a dignified plea for this in the Commons, virtually shaming the Prime Minister into inventing another set of lies, this time on live television. And in doing so, he outclassed David ‘Gagman’ Cameron. But I hear that the focus groupies keep telling Nick that Vince is more popular…and better known. And as you might imagine, this irks the Party leader no end.

Yesterday Vince Cable said he found businessmen climbing onto the Tory bandwagon ‘deeply objectional’, a remark which prompted Clegg within minutes to observe that his Party ‘was very pro-business’. This series of soundbites sums up the difference between the two men – Clegg is a closet Tory and Cable a social democrat – but it also offers a glimpse of what an almighty bunfight a coalition Cabinet would be were both men to be part of it. It also, I’m afraid, highlights that the Liberal Democrats are a confection: a hotch-potch of everything from Grenson shoes to open-toed sandals, with the technocratic suits typified by Nick Clegg temporarily in the ascendancy. Not so much a revolution, more an ephemeral rainbow – only coming out to play when events are raining on the national parade.

Look at the opinion polls, and the effects are very clear: every time Vince Cable opens his mouth, the Libdems jump three points to 21%. Then Clegg aims another rude, superficial insult at somebody important, and the numbers come down again. The LibDems chose the wrong leader last time: and the one they’ve got seems to be working hard to show them why.