Openness, but only up to a point

Yesterday I ran a rather light-hearted post on the "Nick Clegg Superstud" revelations and other true stories that should have been April Fools. Judging by the lack of comments this attempt at sardonic humour obviously completely bombed, so it's back to serious today.

As the sage of Shropshire Jonathan Calder has already pointed out, releasing Clegg's GQ interview yesterday was a fiendishly clever piece of news management by the Lib Dems. The fact that it came out on April 1 would have led many people who read the story to assume it was a spoof, thereby lessening its impact.

But spoof it isn't and those Lib Dems of a sensitive disposition now have to get used to the fact that they now have a reformed serial shagger and teenage arsonist for a leader.

In what looks like something of a damage-limitation exercise, some of Clegg's colleagues have today praised his openness in being prepared to talk about such things, but they are missing one very vital point.

For me, the really interesting thing about Clegg is that while he is happy for us to know he was rather promiscuous in his younger days, happy for us to know he was an arsonist, happy for us to know he was a binge-drinker, even happy for us to know that he doesn't believe in God, he is still not prepared to say whether or not he has ever taken illegal drugs.

Once again, it begs the question just what is it about the drugs question that puts the willies up our political leaders, that causes the likes of Clegg to switch instantly from heart-on-the-sleeve mode to we're-entitled-to-a-private-life mode?

David Cameron famously refused to answer the same question after he became his party's leader, but even he owned up in the end, although the revelation that he had enjoyed a few spliffs at uni was a bit of a let-down to those who assumed his initial reticence must have meant the entire family fortune had disappeared up his nose.

If Clegg really does believe in "openness," he should bury this last taboo.

The Top 10 April Fools That Weren't

We learn courtesy of this morning's Guardian that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has not only shagged up to 30 women but that he once set fire to a greenhouse full of cacti while pissed out of his brain. Unfortunately for Lib Dem supporters, it wasn't an April Fool, and neither was John "greed is good" Hutton being named the best-performing Labour minister in March, albeit on a Tory-supporting blog.

Here's ten other true stories from the past year or so that really should have been April Fools...Feel free to add your own nominations in the comments.

Northern Rock boss gets £760,000 pay-off

Health inequality widens under Labour

Gordon Brown invites Thatcher to tea

Anglican archbishop calls for Sharia Law

Catherine Tate becomes Dr Who's assistant

Balshaw returns as England full-back

Harriet Harman elected deputy Labour leader

Andrew Porter appointed Telegraph Political Editor

China awarded the 2008 Olympics

Mugabe wins the Zimbabwean election

The bleeding obvious

Duke "did not order Diana death" reads the headline on the BBC's superdooper new website. And in other hot news, Gordon Brown "did not think much of Tony Blair," Rupert Murdoch "makes exceedingly large amounts of money," and Pope Benedict XVI "is Catholic."

Barnett finally on the way out

There now seems to be fairly compelling evidence that the skids are finally under the Barnett Formula and unsurprisingly this forms the subject of my weekly column in the Newcastle Journal published today.

Donald Dewar and Ron Davies always said that devolution was a "process, not an event" and so it is proving. The growing demands for greater financial autonomy for Scotland are clearly incompatible with the continuance of a funding system which makes the country financially dependent on England and this has created an unexpected window of opportunity for the government to look again at the whole vexed issue.