By Bagehot

MY PRINT column this week examines the strange mood of calm that surrounds Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democratic leader and deputy prime minister, after his party was given a thumping by voters on May 5th. Mr Clegg’s detractors call him unprincipled and driven only by ambition. I genuinely think that is unfair, or fair only inasmuch as all front-rank politicians are driven by ambition. I think that the real difference is that by the tribal standards of British politics, Mr Clegg is unusually attached to reason and logic. He ponders the extravagant hatred being directed towards him and his party, and I think he concludes that mostly the British public have not yet understood the changed realities of life under a coalition government.