Another endorsement for Clegg

First the Guardian, now Clegg gets this praise from libertarian blogger Guido Fawkes: http://order-order.com/2010/05/02/clegg-and-the-weirdie-beardies/

"Guido likes Clegg, his anti-statist liberalism is a welcome change from the more-of-the-same social democrats who have dominated the LibDems since the merger. Clegg and some of his leadership team, like David Laws and Ed Davey, are in policy terms really on the centre-right even if they prefer to describe themselves as centre-left."

If Guido's analysis is right and Clegg is "really on the centre-right" then the leftie mushy thinkers at the Guardian really have been sucker-punched.

I think Guido has read Clegg's thinking better than Alan Rusbridger has.

Meanwhile the effect on the ground of Cleggmania has been to tie-up loads of Labour activists in Guardian-reader seats to fend off the Lib Dems from taking-out often Lib Dem friendly Labour MPs when they could have been campaigning elsewhere against the Tories or BNP. Not helped by the literally insane tactical voting advice in the Observer -http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/02/tactical-vote-election-2010 which recommends a Lib Dem vote in 28 seats where Labour is first and the Tories are second, a move that could see the Tories win in all those seats stuffing any chances of anything other than a Tory majority government.

And Clegg has responded to olive branches from the appeaser wing of Labour by giving interviews hinting not that he is a pluralist who wants a multi-party system where he works with Labour as a sister progressive force, but that he wants to replace us - i.e. we'd end up still with a two-party system, just back to the Victorian one where both main parties represented middle class interests and the trade union movement and working class people had no voice in the party system.

I'm not for rolling over and letting that happen.