Clegg's honeymoon is truly over as the Tory press reverts to type

[Turborama]

Posted by
Roy Greenslade Thursday 22 April 2010 11.10 BST

This morning that full-frontal scrutiny arrived - and how. There was the Daily Telegraph reviving its MPs-expenses-style front page to allege that http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7616526/General-Election-2010-Nick-Clegg-the-Lib-Dem-donors-and-payments-into-his-private-bank-account.html">Clegg had a series of payments from party donors paid into his private bank account.

The Daily Mail headline shouted: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1267921/GENERAL-ELECTION-2010-Nick-Clegg-Nazi-slur-Britain.html">Clegg in Nazi slur on UK and accused the Lib Dem leader of "an astonishing attack on our national pride by saying that British people have a "more insidious cross to bear" than Germany over the second world war.

This cannot have taken too much trouble to find since the quotes were extracted from a Guardian article in 2002, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/19/eu.germany">Don't mention the war. Grow up. No-one complained at the time (when Clegg was an MEP) because, in context, it is eminently sensible.

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/apr/22/nickclegg-general-election-2010

Nick Clegg's response:

"I have done nothing wrong. In the next few days I will publish figures to prove it. ...I must be the only politician in the space of a week to go from Churchill to a Nazi."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7104602.ece