Clegg performs better than Lynne Featherstone. But then so does a hamster

By QUENTIN LETTS, PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER
Updated:

Do you remember the canoeists at the end of TV’s Hawaii  Five-O? Every week we saw them in the closing credits, surging towards the beach.

Every week the poor souls were no closer to land. All that effort for so little gain! Maddening.

Yet on they pressed, morale undimmed, an example to us all.

Struggling: Nick Clegg did little to suggest that the Lib Dems might abstain from voting on university fees

Struggling: Nick Clegg did little to suggest that the Lib Dems might abstain from voting on university fees

Nick Clegg and his Lib Dems are in a canoe of their own devising. They, too, are making little progress at present. On the university fees policy they are not proving quite as stoical as the Hawaii boys.

Mr Clegg came to the Commons at 2.30pm yesterday for his monthly half-hour of ‘Deputy PM Questions’. He did a lot of paddling but struggled to beat the tide. He certainly did little to quieten suggestions that Lib Dem ministers may abstain from a Commons vote on college fees.

His party belongs to a Government but thinks it can swerve one of its bigger policies. And he is the Deputy Prime Minister!

   

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His party belongs to a Government but thinks it can swerve one of its bigger policies. And he is the Deputy Prime Minister!

Not all the Lib Dem crew were at their rowlocks yesterday. Apart from six ministers and one parliamentary aide (dear old Norman Lamb), there were just nine of them in the Chamber. Where were the rest? Plotting?

Some of those who attended were happy to show vocal support for Mr Clegg. Tom Brake (Carshalton),  Jo Swinson (E Dunbartonshire), Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) and Duncan Hames (Chippenham) all cheered their leader with hear-hears. But Simon Hughes (N Southwark), who turned up at 2.41pm, kept his lips pursed. Alan Reid (Argyll) sat at an angle, riding side-saddle, silent.

John Pugh (Southport) was even later than Mr Hughes and, on sitting down, clutched the tip of his chin, as though it had just been repaired and he was waiting for the glue to set.

Mr Clegg does not yet command the Chamber. He hurries his words and is so tense that he cannot chuckle at the criticisms made by Labour.

In parliamentary terms he is a good couple of divisions below David Cameron. Nor is he on a par with the likes of William Hague, Michael Gove, Vince Cable, even Chris Huhne. He is better at the despatch box than Lynne Featherstone, I grant you, but so is the average hamster.

Mr Clegg feels the parliamentary criticism too keenly and speaks in too staccato a tone. He has yet to develop a varnish, not just for its shine but also for its protective qualities.

Things began with a lucky break. Steve McCabe (Lab, Selly Oak) asked about something written by a Dutch woman of whom none of us had heard. Except Mr Clegg. He is half-Dutch and had heard of the person. And it turned out she was in fact a bloke.

Despite receiving support from some MPs, Clegg has yet to command the Chamber

Despite receiving support from some MPs, Clegg has yet to command the Chamber

Mr Clegg pronounced the man’s name with aplomb, in the process making a sound which should have shifted any catarrh off his tonsils. Harriet Harman was next up for Labour. She repeatedly asked Mr Clegg if he would vote for the Government’s university fees policy. Repeatedly he would not say. Labour MPs set up a rolling, jeering din. Initially the Speaker did nothing to prevent this. He and Mr Clegg are not close.

It helped Mr Clegg that the other Labour frontbencher quizzing him was Sadiq Khan.
As a backbencher, Mr Khan used to have peppery value. As a frontbencher he is a work in progress. Maybe it is the juvenile, sticky-uppy fringe. Maybe it is, again, a disjointed, staccato delivery. Both he and Mr Clegg could do with honeying the gaps between words.

Earlier, the Home Affairs Select Committee heard from Janis Sharp, mother of Gary McKinnon, the autistic man who hacked into American military computers and is now being pursued by a wrathful  Washington DC. They want him extradited.

Mrs Sharp was superb: fluent but fresh, intense yet easily understood. She was miles better than Nick Clegg at the communications game. She pointed out that it is now nine years since her son committed his alleged crime.

Come on, America. This isn’t justice. It’s harassment.

A collection of Quentin’s articles in the Daily Mail over the past decade, Letts Rip!, has just been published by Constable & Robinson, priced £12.99.


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