I had a lot of fun this morning listening to the 'Today' programme whereon Chris Huhne got himself in to self-righteous lather about this morning's press 'smearing' his Boss, Little Nickie Clegg. The Lib Dems, of course, never smeared anyone in their lives.

The reality is that these stories are rather lethal since they show, as they are meant to do, that Clegg has a major bit of explaning to do about his finances and that at heart he despises the little british blood that flows through his veins.

The implication of the Telegraph's report is singularly damning. It is that Clegg may have simply trousered amounts of money that were paid directly into his bank account. This would, of colurse, make him singularly beholden to the individuals  who paid him the money. It also thrusts a lance at the heart of his sanctimonious and self-righteous claims about the Lib Dems being squeaky clean on expenses and donations.

Hence the faux indignation of Huhne this morning. He knew a nice deep wound had been opened in the Clegg torso and that a steady exsanguination was taking place.

The Lib Dems, as you would expect, claim these payments are all entirely above board.  If so, why put them through Clegg's own bank account. That is not the action of someone trying to be open and transparent, is it?

The Telegraph puts the issue succinctly:

Details of the payments have emerged because, during 2006, Mr Clegg submitted copies of his personal bank statements to the House of Commons when claiming expenses. He highlighted the mortgage payments for his second home, which were funded by the taxpayer.

However, the statements also show the series of other payments being made to Mr Clegg. The payments are recorded as “automated credits” from the businessmen.

During the period covered by the statements, Mr Clegg was the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman.

Last night, the three businessmen all admitted paying the money into Mr Clegg’s bank account. They said that the money they donated was to help fund a member of staff in Mr Clegg’s parliamentary office.

Mr Clegg has also officially declared to the parliamentary authorities that his office received money from the three businessmen.

Official records for 2006 show that Mr Clegg also claimed £90,526 in “staffing allowances” to pay his assistants and other staff. The records also indicate that he only had two people working in his parliamentary office that year. The maximum they could be paid in 2006 was £37,245 plus a pension and perks. During the same year, a part-time organiser was employed in Mr Clegg’s Sheffield constituency office on a salary of £8,966.

It is not clear why Mr Clegg would require the extra funds as the salaries were apparently covered by the taxpayer. He also made separate claims from his office expenses to cover staffing assistance provided by the Liberal Democrats.

Mr Young said the payments had to be made into Mr Clegg’s personal bank account because there was no fund for the “Parliamentary Office of the Liberal Democrats”.

However, Mr Clegg’s own expenses show that in February 2006 he asked the fees office to begin making a monthly payment to the “Parliamentary Office of the Liberal Democrats” for £833 “until further notice”. The paperwork indicates this was to cover salary costs.

Mr Clegg said last night that the money received from the businessmen had been used to pay a member of staff and not to fund his personal expenditure. However, he said that after he became party leader in 2007 the arrangement had been changed and the money was now paid directly to the Liberal Democrats.

He added: “All payments were declared as a standing item on the register of members’ interests and used appropriately to fund an additional member of staff in my parliamentary office. When I became leader of the Liberal Democrats, the arrangements were changed so that the money was paid through the Parliamentary Office of the Liberal Democrats.”

A spokesman for Mr Clegg insisted that the money had been paid to fund half of a researcher’s salary. He said he was “not in a position” to provide the necessary paperwork, but added that this could be produced in future.

Mr Sherlock, Mr Young and Mr Wright said they were satisfied the donations had been used to fund a member of staff.

Quite so. It also begs the question as to why Clegg has not immediately produced the documentation that the spokesman says could be produced in due course: there are two weeks to go to the election. We are patient. By next Thursday, say, let us have sight of the proof. That would put an end to the stories....wouldn't it?

It is, however, his views on the UK which will offend the most and cause him the most damage. How he must be regretting sharing his true opinions with the Guardian all those years ago....


Watching Germany rise from its knees after the war and become a vastly more prosperous nation has not been easy on the febrile British psyche,’ Mr Clegg wrote, before attacking Britain’s approach to the war.

‘All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still."

Making clear his love affair with all things European, he condemned the British ‘belief in our innate difference from our mainland continental cousins’.

He went on: ‘No other culture in Europe is quite so enamoured by such a false notion of difference.

'We Brits concoct a historically illiterate notion that we are divorced from outside influences. Maybe it was loss of empire, the choppy waters of the Channel, or the last war.’ 

Thus do the EU Comrades, of whom Clegg is one, affect to decry their respective nation-states. Well, thanks to the Mail for printing it so that the British People might have a good gander at the man who would desperately like to be PM. They will not, one suspects, like what they see one little bit. And, one suspects, Mr. Huhne's tetchy and querulous complaints to to John Humprys this morning indicate that they know it only too well.


John Locke

johnlockesblog@gmail.com