Nick Clegg may have crossed the Rubicon

I was told earlier by a Lib Dem MP that Nick Clegg had only quite recently crossed the Rubicon and firmly decided that he would contest a second election as leader of his party.

The MP said he was absolutely sure that Nick Clegg had had a serious conversation with his wife Miriam to this effect quite recently. But I have to say Nick Clegg’s most trusted inner circle say they don’t know anything about it.

Elsewhere in the Conference jungle, Tim Farron, the Party President is expected to use his speech to talk about how he gets to “parade his conscience around the studios” while Lib Dem ministers are doing all the hard work. Based on some of the conversations I’ve had recently that line could get a standing ovation at a gathering of certain MP colleagues.

Another footnote. Sir Archibald Sinclair, the last Liberal to occupy government office until the Coalition was formed, a minister in Churchill’s war-time Cabinet, is grandfather to the very Will Sinclair who was George Osborne‘s mucker in some of the alleged antics recently alluded to by a prostitute in an Australian TV interview. Small world.