Deathbed optimism

Of course, Clegg is being roared on by the ever-ecumenical Broad Left.

While Balls and Mandelson dismember the Labour Party's corpse, Freedlands and Toynbees all over London's more acceptable neighbourhoods are feeling strangely aroused as they run Clegg's deliciously anti-British sentiments around their tongues and ponder his delightfully Fabian policies on immigration, disarmament, appeasement, education, taxation and voodoo economics. And submission to the socialist international that is the European Project, obviously.

It brings back the old days, when Jack Straw was giving NUS rallies much the same stuff Clegg is spouting now, only with added venom and without the hopey-changey-touchy-feely bits. (Straw was a hard man once, but then he grew up.) The same rentamob was waving the same placards outside the Arnolfini last night, predictably cheering Clegg's every bon mot.

And so the Guardian and the Indy will hold their noses and come out for Clegg on election day, calculating that the New Left wunderkind may just postpone the final obliteration of their moribund Old Left party.