“But listen guys, it’s only a teensy-weensy little policy, right?”

Although not every viewer will have spotted this, Jeremy Paxman destroyed Nick Clegg as a credible politician last Monday night. With his customary (and deadly) combination of persistence and logic, Paxo caught the Liberal Democrat leader out on almost every issue of Party policy, revealing him to be the shallow chancer he is.

It wasn’t just that the BBC’s star griller showed Clegg up on almost every contradictory and ill-thought-out element of Libdem proposals: more crucially, he had his subject on the ropes so quickly, Nick Clegg was reduced to obvious diversionary tactics, dissembling and changes of topic. And as such, he came across as just another lightweight politician.

But there was a seminal moment in the interview when Paxman asked what the conditions for cooperation with a minority Government might be. And at this point, the Liberal Democrat leader had a shock in store. He said:

“Tax reform, increased school funding, splitting up the largest banks, and a ‘complete clean up of Westminster politics’.”

It wasn’t until I watched this excruciating encounter again this afternoon that it dawned on me: proportional representation had dropped off the shopping list.

Amazing, but true: I missed it, and every title in Fleet Street missed it too. The one great big Liberal cause celebre of the last fifty years, and Nick Clegg left it out of his ideal Party-bag.

Perhaps this is what Nick Clegg meant today when he said that there is ‘no price’ for the Liberal Democrats to join a coalition: as in, he wants power at any price – even if that includes the only policy that could transform his Party from being a bit-player via power-broker to credible Party of Government.

At the close of the show, Jeremy optimistically suggested that in the following weeks he hoped to be interviewing Brown and Cameron. I’d rather watch either of these than a bunch of sterile debates, but I’m not holding my breath: Party bigwigs are terrified of Paxman, and they are right to be so.