After two days of uncertainty, Nick Clegg’s position as Lib Dem leader is beginning to look secure (as I predicted it would). The constituency polls commissioned by the treacherous Lord Oakeshott, which suggested that Clegg and others would lose their seats, have backfired on the rebels (who make Gordon Brown’s would-be assassins look a model of efficiency), with Vince Cable brutally slapping down his representative on earth last night.
Clegg has also won the support of another party grandee in the form of Shirley Williams and the backing of 54 per cent of party members in a Liberal Democrat Voice poll. A ring round by the Sun may have found just 30 MPs (out of a total of 57) prepared to back the leader but there is a difference between the absence of support and outright rebellion. As in the case of the anti-Brown plotters, there is no sign that the rebels have found an alternative leader to coalesce around, with neither Vince Cable nor Tim Farron prepared to play the role of Michael Heseltine in this drama.
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