Clegg 'Forgets' He's In Charge!

Nick Clegg apparently forgot he was in charge of the country while David Cameron is busy touting for business in the New Improved Middle East. Actually, to be fair, he merely made an off-hand comment, saying that he supposed he was in charge, but the whole issue is rather overblown in the modern era with the internet and blackberrys.

Clegg has it right. His refusal to make a big play of deputising for the PM, and instead acknowledging that things don't change much just because the PM is out of the country, is a welcome difference from the bear-pit politics of the Blair era. In those days, the issue of who should be 'in charge' when Blair was on holiday, or away, was savagely contested amongstt he Labour high command. It was meant to be John Prescott, but that didn't usually stop a Mandelson or a Straw or a Reid claiming they were really the ones pulling the strings. More recently, under Gordon Brown, he had barely left Downing Street for a brief sojourn before Harriet Harman came charging in, holding press conferences and playing the role of acting PM for all it was worth (which wasn't much!).

So well done Nick Clegg. Ignore the ludicrously puffed-up nay-sayers and keep acknowledging the deputising role for what it is - virtually an irrelevance.