A very strange thing happened last night. The PoliticsHome site headlined, ‘Clegg demands pr for Coalition’. The problem is, I’ve followed all the links, and I can’t find anywhere else but PoliticsHome recording Nick as saying any such thing.

The Guardian link doesn’t even mention it. The linked interview with the Independent opines that Clegg will ‘raise the stakes’ and demand ‘a proportional voting system’ – but neither the piece nor Nick Clegg uses the words ‘proportional representation’. For those among you who aren’t wonks like me by the way, AV – the Alternative Vote system – is not a proportional voting system: it is a majoritarian system.

The FT link mentions that Brown is not really in favour of any voting reform. It quotes Paddy Ashdow as saying, “This is entirely to do with the desperation of the condemned man the day before he goes to the gallows.” But the words proportional and representation do not appear anywhere.

I Googled it in general, and under ‘News’. I searched it in Microsoft news. Nothing. I trawled through every newspaper website. Zilch. Why, we ask, did PoliticsHome give this such an airing when it doesn’t appear to be true? Was it, we wonder, to tempt readers into a subscription? Only, this was the first pop-up that appeared when I tried to follow ‘6 links to story’. Somehow, even I think that would be daft.

Just as significant, however, is that Clegg was at pains to say last night that the dumping of Gordon Brown was not a deal-breaker. And let us not forget that, given the opportunity with Jeremy Paxman to say PR was not negotiable, he didn’t mention it at all.

There is something extremely odd going on here. We all know what it is….but there do seem to be rather a lot of influential people involved in it. Why?