Another calamity for Clegg
James Forsyth 1:23pm
The last thing that Nick Clegg needed this morning was the claim in The Independent on Sunday that if all the votes had been counted Chris Huhne would have been elected leader. Clegg won the leadership by 511 votes but the paper claims that if the 1,300 postal votes which arrived after the voting deadline had passed had been counted then Huhne would have won.
On Sunday AM, Clegg dismissed the story as having “no foundation or fact whatsoever.” But by suggesting that he is not the legitimate leader it undermines his position at the end of a disastrous week for him.
Clegg’s GQ interview is continuing to cause problems for him. On Sunday AM, Clegg came close to expressing regret for his remarks saying when asked abut why he would talk about his sex life but not drugs, “I probably should be consistent on both and, and be private on both.”
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Comments
Faceless Bureaucrat
April 6th, 2008 4:04pmThis is the beginning of the end - if there is now doubt about even the legitimacy of Clegg's leadership (and you can bet that Huhne has already decided how he can best exploit this revelation) Lib-Dem MPs will be worrying about how long they dare leave it before reaching the 'Bottle of Whiskey and Revolver' scenario - Cable or Huhne, who's your money on James?...
Kevyn Bodman
April 6th, 2008 6:44pmClegg has had such an awful time of it recently, largely through his own misjudgments but now just by bad luck, that if he wasn't a politician I'd be tempted to feel sorry for him; but he is , and I'm not.
I'd like to bet that he won't be leading the LibDems on 1/1/2010 because I don't think he can recover.
Do British bookies offer odds on this sort of thing?
Michael Hunt
April 6th, 2008 8:40pmClegg's win was helped also by a large chunk of LibDem voters being a bit hasty in casting their votes early.
No doubt some of the Clegg voters would have changed their minds if they had seen more of Chris Hune's superior campaign.
It looks as if the party has bought a pup.
Jessica
April 6th, 2008 9:43pmTories should be counting their lucky stars it was Clegg elected and not Hulne. I said at the time of the Lib Dem leadership election Hulne is the one to fear as he is more credible unlike wishy washy Clegg and Hulne is an attack dog that is good at getting his message accross.