NICK Clegg is trying to bluster his way through the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton, well aware that his leadership of the party is by no means secure.
Already two serious names are in the frame as possible successors, including Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, whose credentials for the post are as good as anybody’s and better than most. He has already used the expression “never say never”.
Then there is support for the heavyweight Energy Secretary, Ed Davey, a right-winger in Liberal Democrat terms.
Davey’s supporters are convinced that if there is a showdown - and such an event is not impossible - then Davey would have little difficulty in “seeing off” the left-of-centre Cable.
In short, there is plenty of squabbling going on behind the scenes at Brighton. The Liberal Democrats are certainly not a happy band of warriors at the seaside this year.
The timing of Clegg’s belated and grovelling apology for breaking his general election pledge on tuition fees seems to have been designed to abate the criticism at the conference. But the dissatisfaction with Clegg runs much deeper than just that one issue.
As Lib Dem support crumbles from one end of the country to the other, Clegg is no longer the hero of the hour.
He may think he has plenty of time to strengthen his own position. But the vultures are already circling overhead, and may well strike before he is very much older.
n Andrew Mitchell deserves to be sacked for his gross verbal attack on police officers who refused to allow him to cycle through the main gates at the top of Downing Street.
“I am the chief whip,” he announced pompously. Then, it is alleged, he called them “plebs”, an expression which he denies having used.
“Thrasher” Mitchell (as he is known) was promoted to chief whip in the recent Cabinet reshuffle. His apparent arrogance and sense of superiority are breathtaking. He has made an apology but a Labour spokesman said it was “not enough”.
And just at the time when David Cameron seems to have succeeded in eliminating for good the “nasty party” tag that used to be associated with the Conservatives, Mitchell immediately resurrects it. No wonder the Tories’ opponents are rubbing their hands with glee.
Mitchell probably does not have the sense to realise that it is incidents like this which are, in the long run, more damaging to a party’s electoral prospects than even unpopular policies. The voters do not forget.
I should imagine that the Prime Minister is incandescent with rage - and he has every right to be.
n Nick Clegg said this just before the start of the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton: “My message to those Conservative backbench MPs who seem to think they have the right to force a turbo-charged right-wing agenda on our country is this: You didn’t win the last election.”
Fair enough.
But it is a little rich coming from the leader of a party which also did not win the last election, but which came a very bad third and which actually lost five seats when the common expectation was that they would gain a large number of new members.
It always helps, I think, to get things into proper perspective before people like Clegg start to throw their weight around.
n The case of Grant Shapps, the new Conservative Party chairman, gets curiouser and curiouser, as Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have said.
When he unsuccessfully stood as a Conservative candidate in Southwark North and Bermondsey in 1997, his election leaflets described him as “a Londoner by birth”. Yet when at later elections he fought Welwyn Hatfield, he was described in his literature as having been “born in Hertfordshire”.
Conservative Central Office airily dismiss the affair by saying that the “born in London” claim was a genuine mistake which had been corrected.
Also changes have been made in his Wikipedia entry and, mysteriously, he appeared at a Las Vegas self-help conference under the name of Michael Green.
All very odd.
I am not surprised that Labour have already made clear that they want to see this matter clarified.