Different names in their story, Sky reckon Alistair Carmichael will join Tim Farron and David Heath. Bring back Vince…

Over on GuyNews is the whole Paxman Newsnight interview with Clegg. Guido’s favourite bit is 4 minutes and 50 seconds in, when Clegg accuses the Labour Party of reneging on their referendum commitment. Doh!

Last night’s Paxman interview was excruciating, Clegg at one point attacked the Labour Party for “reneging on its commitment to a referendum”. The government uses exactly the same sophistry as the LibDems. So he was condemning himself by those words. The whole fiasco seems unnecessary. A three line-whip to not vote because Clegg’s preferred option is not on the order paper? Idiocy.

UPDATE : Sandra Gidley, who shadows health is likely to vote against the leadership.

Guido had his good impression of Clegg diminished during his leadership fight with Huhne, which he won (just) on votes while Huhne won on style and determination. Interviewed yesterday Clegg tried to justify wriggling out of his manifesto promise to hold a referendum. He claimed that the Lisbon Treaty was too “measly and paltry” to hold a referendum on. He was then asked whether the UK needs a clear cut definition so that we can judge if something is constitutionally significant and therefore warrants a referendum?

Clegg: “I strongly agree with that. There’s some good organisations, an organisation which I think is great is Unlock Democracy which is putting forward some ideas about how we could get some sort of logic into when a referendum is appropriate or not.” (BBC 5 Live, 27 February, 2008)

That would be the Unlock Democracy group which put out a statement on Tuesday from its director Peter Facey criticising the Lib Dems for refusing to back a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty saying: “they should back down and support the Conservative amendment.” Logical?

In Guido’s schooldays he had an RE teacher with the distinction of being held in contempt by the boys and the headmaster. We would compete to get thrown out of class and sent down to the headmaster’s office. The headmaster would invariably shake his head and send us on our way.

Yesterday’s stunt by Ed Davey had the same feel. He was clearly desperate to get thrown out, he was followed by a few of his faux-harumphing fellow Cleggies. Boys will be boys…

Simon Hughes is celebrating the dirty Bermondsey campaign that got him elected 25 years ago. He made his name in the early 80s winning working-class Bermondsey from Labour in a vicious battle. The gay-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell was his Labour opponent. Hughes made it clear in this election pamphlet that he was the “straight choice”. Ironically it turned out he wasn’t…It took some twenty years for Simon Hughes to apologise to Tatchell for that campaign, and that was only after he was outed himself.

Hat-tip : Guido is grateful to the Bermondsey Labour Party for pointing this out.

Simon Hughes’ somewhat frazzled researcher is currently calling TV companies and newspapers asking “can you remember when Simon was on/wrote for you over the past year? He has to file his tax return.”

Simon has a terrible memory and his January 29th tax return is looming. His memory is so bad that during the 1983 Bermondsey by-election (which was described by Gay News as “the dirtiest and most notorious by-election in British political history”) in which he beat gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, after distributing a leaflet describing the election as a “straight choice”, he forgot he was gay bisexual. Easily done…

The recently ennobled Lord Hameed’s companies have given £400,000 to the LibDems in the past two years. Lord Tim Clement-Jones is head of spin for DLA Piper’s public affairs and government relations practice as well as the LibDem’s party treasurer. (Incidentally, the LibDem’s voted to require lobbyists who were LibDem parliamentarians to withdraw from lobbying two years ago. Clement-Jones ignores the party ruling.)

When The Times asked Clement-Jones who it was who put Hameed forward for a peerage, he said that he had “no idea” who had proposed Lord Hameed. After The Times said it had evidence that it was him, he said: “I couldn’t remember that. That’s fine. I thought he was a very upstanding member of the Asian community and somebody who would make a very good peer.” An amazingly quick recall of why he proposed him when seconds earlier he couldn’t even remember proposing Hameed.

It gets worse, no declaration of the donations was declared to the Lords Appointments Committee. Lord Dholakia, the deputy leader of the LibDems and their representative sitting on the Committee knows Hameed but denies he knew he was the third biggest donor to the party. The party of course denies any link between the cash and putting Hameed forward for an honour. Stinks doesn’t it? Maybe Chris Huhne will write another letter to the police about it…