Pity Nick Clegg. The Deputy Prime Minister could win prizes for earnest idealism. This past week, he gave a lengthy statement on electoral reform full of "never agains", "unique duties" and, unusually for the Lib Dems, only one major U-turn. It was hard to forget Macbeth's poor player, strutting and fretting his hour on the stage, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". Forget an hour. Mr Clegg filled the Commons with sound and fury
for almost 90 minutes - an entire football match of constitutional revolution. The Prime Minister watched on with a clenched smile and the token nod.

But let's face it, Nick. You can make speeches until you're yellowy-blue in the face. Your "friends" will watch you strut and fret and then usher you off the pitch and into the dressing room, where you'll be told to clean George Osborne's boots with a toothbrush. If you're lucky, you'll graduate to team mascot. The PM will take you with him wherever he goes. And, like all mascots, you'll start to look tacky and be dumped when it all goes wrong. Don't say we didn't warn you.