The Boys from the Back Room

So, now's not the time for 'the backroom boys', eh? The current crisis requires real leadership. At least, that's what Nick 'Calamity' Clegg told us at the Tory Lickspittles, sorry, Liberal Democrats, conference this week. The 'backroom' boys he was so dismissive of were the two Eds - Milliband and Balls - who, he claimed, had been two of Gordon Brown's 'backroom boys'. Whilst I'm sure that Clegg's intent was to emphasise how he and his pal 'Call me Dave' Cameron are real men of action when it comes to politics, rather than just theorists with no practical skills, for me, it instead just showed him up for the public school bully boy he really is. His sneering tone when he spoke the phrase 'backroom boys' just dripped with the kind of contempt that rugby-playing, good at sports but thick at everything else, prefects always reserve for the smart boys at those public schools. When he said 'backroom boys', he might as well have been saying 'speccy geek weaklings' and when he talked about real leaders, he might s well have been saying 'rugger buggerers'.

That's what this is all about really: Clegg despises the likes of Miliband and Balls not because of political ideology, but because they remind him of the 'clever kids' at his public school - the ones who weren't tolerated because they weren't good at sports, but who, infuriatingly, still make the 'rugger buggerers' feel slightly inadequate. The trouble is that now, out of school, they've risen to positions of authority, and can't be bullied quite so easily. Which is why, of course, Clegg is so desperate to take us back to the politics of the playground, especially as he thinks he is now in a position of power, and resort to name-calling and a primal appeal to Britain's innate anti-intellectualism. You can't trust these brainboxes, he's saying, but you know where you are with us public school prefects - we're good at sports, which means, by extension, we've probably got big cocks. Which means we're very masculine and definitely not gay. Unlike those brainy kids, who smell, as well. And if you are lucky, we'll give you a bloody good caning! You know you want it! God, what a cunt you are, Clegg.