The Daily Mail carries a sleaze piece today alleging that a key aide to deputy PM Nick Clegg personally intervened to get £12 million of taxpayers cash fast tracked to a charity ( BookTrust) of which Mr Clegg’s wife is a prominent supporter. Apparently emails have just emerged showing that while other charities must bid for Government cash, this one just got it. Hmmm.
The piece manages to find a rent-a-quote Tory and Labour MP to demand an enquiry. Oh, another one. An enquiry a day, hip hip hooray, more money to pay, what more can I say? Do politicians ever do anything in life apart from call for enquiries? Personally I do not see why taxpayer’s cash in Bankrupt Britain is handed to charities at all. Booktrust may do great work but it a fake charity. It is now an arm of Government. That to me is a scandal.
As for Cleggy I ask you one question: who benefits? It is generally accepted that poor Nick has become a total liability for the Lib Dems who came 8th in Rotherham, the worst result for his party in almost 75 years. Bring back Charles Kennedy (drunk or sober), the late paedophile MP Cyril Smith (notwithstanding that he is dead), Jeremy Thorpe, his gay lover or the dead dog Rinka and any of them would be more credible. And so it is hard to see why anyone in the Tory party or Labour party would snitch on Nick, leak these emails and risk him being toppled.
There is only one party where significant number of MPs think their own electoral prospects come 2015 would be enhanced by Clegg departing. That is his own. The piece in the Mail very deliberately quoted Tory and Labour MPs but makes it clear the paper has talked to no Lib Dem. Yup right. I am sure this is a non scandal. But in the sack the ferrets are at play.
I see now that Clegg supporters are suggesting that this is the Daily Mail bashing Clegg becuase he supports Leveson style press regulation which he opposes. That is one spin. But who passed the emails onto the Mail? They have to have come from insisde Westminster. I am not sure that I buy this line.
You can read the Daily Mail article HERE.