'Strange' is a lazy insult - especially coming from New Labour

And the same to you, Alan

"He's a strange man is Clegg, isn't he?" said Alan Johnson to a couple of New Statesman toadies in Wednesday's issue of what must be one of the most irrelevant magazines on the newsstands. "He was a strange little man" said Hitler of Neville Chamberlain seventy years ago.

It's funny how the very act of simply saying someone is 'strange' makes the Left feel reassured that their lads still enjoy a monopoly of progressive, rational and caring attitudes. Only last week the appalling Tessa Jowell said on Radio 4 that the 'profound difference' between the Government and the Tories was "we care and they don't". There are probably a few diehards in Ebbw Vale prepared to soak up that sort of piffle, but that'd be it.

One of the major problems with Nick Clegg, it seems to me, is that there is nothing interesting (odd or otherwise) about the bloke. But for a former postie who cynically dissembled at Health, and looks confused at the Home Office, to wonder about strangeness in another Party is outstandingly peculiar in its own right.

Mandelson, for example, is a serial cloud-follower and bare-faced liar - with a decidedly strange hold over a Prime Minister who lies unconsciously about what biscuits he likes. The Chancellor is a former small-town solicitor who shows little or no understanding of (or creativity about) the gigantic pile of mammoth poo we are in at the moment, but remains convinced that cutting prices by 2.5% had an effect in a retail environment where they were already being slashed by half. Jowell herself chose to cut heavy drinking by extending the licensing hours. John Prescott put bus-lanes on motorways. Patricia Hewitt spent 20% of the NHS budget on an IT system that never worked. She gave GPs a 25% rise and got nothing in return. Our armed forces minister looks like PC Plod and used to be a union convenor at British Leyland. Harriet Harman thinks you can stop prostitution by forcing men to ask whether their hooker has a pimp or not. Ed Balls behaves like a naughty schoolboy and spends his time on trains and Twitter.

You want strange? That's strange.

The earlier Hitler reference, however, was brought on by watching more of Andrew Marr's fine UK history series on the BBC last night. For what struck me forcibly was the euphoria shown by those adoring crowds when Chamberlain returned with a grubby bit of paper as the only prize for selling a whole country down the river.

Those same people's idiot grandchildren are busy chattering and writing about Britain's imminent emergence from recession, and how the global financial meltdown wasn't really that bad after all, was it? If ever a group of people reminded me of Hitler about to invade Poland, it's the mad and ungrateful bankers currently returning to their 'job' of making pots of electronic and completely dysfunctional money. And if ever an arrogantly bewildered dinosaur reminded me of Chamberlain, it's Gordon Brown.

Two years from now - at the most - Blair, Brown, Mandelson, Prescott and Darling will need a police escort wherever they go, and it might still not save their necks. Another £61billion sliding under the counter to bankers. £300 billion of bailout money that went direct to the Middle East and China without passing Go. Saving Northern Rock to save three Labour seats....another £93 billion. Riding roughshod over local planning decisions at the cost of £7 billion. Starting a war that's cost £13 billion to date, but which was clearly known beforehand to be a pointless exercise in Presidential machismo.

None of this has been enough to make them pariahs as yet. This is purely because Essex man's wallet has not been that affected - only those of his future progeny have been emptied in advance. But once the full extent of radioactive loans, European debt and hopelessly decimated economic structure are fully out in the open - and once our credit rating falls as the debts and taxes rise - somehow I don't think even this electorate will be daft enough to blame those wicked, baby-bayoneting Tories.

As the Cameroons quickly illustrate they haven't a clue what to do, however, I still believe there will come a second Churchill moment. 2012 (or thereabouts) will be our 1940: a national salvation Government will be mooted. And a 28-1 bet at Paddy Power is the money where the mouth is.

What price then the 'strange' man Nick Clegg to take over, with Vince Cable as his Chancellor?

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