Nick Clegg, Politician in Pampers

I've been laying into Gordon Brown a lot recently. And with good cause, I believe. But I wouldn't want any of the occasional readers of this blog to think that my current ire against our Prime Minister makes me fan of the other leaders of our main parties. Ok, they are not as bad as Brown. But to be not as bad as complete and total shite is not the most wonderful of compliments.

So let's take a look at Nick Clegg. On paper, Nick Clegg should be a great prospect for the Lib Dems. Young, photogenic, reasonably eloquent - he should be the person, given his youth and sobriety, to drag the Lib Dems from their position of being the perennial "also ran" party of British politics. Yet, he really isn't. He really, really isn't.

Much of what follows may appear to be a rant against the relative youth of Nick Clegg. It is not. After all, I am 29 and have no great desire to put up with anything or anyone that disregards people based on their age. No, it is not Clegg's age. Rather, it is his lack of maturity.

I mean, where the ruddy fuck did they find this man? Everything about his exudes the aura of someone who has wound up the leader of a national party but doesn't quite know how he managed it or what he is supposed to do now he has managed it. He is the Early Learning Centre's answer to a political leader. Seriously, his leadership of the Lib Dems feels like "My First Party Leadership". It wouldn't surprise me if, in ten years or so, he is running to be leader of Labour or the Tories, arguing that he has already had some experience of running a party and is now ready to move into the real political world.

Look at some of the things he has done since becoming leader. He embraced Brian Eno as his youth advisor. Fuck knows why, given Eno is pretty much an OAP. He has talked about bedding 30 plus women, like a teenager indulged in willy waving in a minor British public school. And he has sniped at Gordon Brown, like a flea biting the bum of a warthog. It irritates the warthog, but ultimately does not matter at all.

I rant a lot about David Cameron looking like a political lightweight, but, fucking hell, Clegg makes Cameron look like a political genius of the highest order. Which is a pretty big achievement, given Cameron has all the spine and political guile of an amoeba. Unlike Gordon, you wouldn't avoid Clegg like the plague. You'd be more likely to run into him through friends or at parties, and wonder why God/Allah/Fate/his parents ever allowed such an earnest yet cliched twat to walk the earth. And then you would marvel at how on earth such a man ever became leader of a major political party in this country.

Until you realise he is leader of the Lib Dems. Because if they are good at anything, it is electing shit leaders. Be it the ginger drunk. Or the decrepit old fool who appeared to have died years before he became a party leader. In some respects, selecting the Playmobil MP as a leader is completely consistent for the Lib Dems. And further evidence that they are not so much a wasted vote, as a complete waste of space.