Prat's Clegg-fall at the UN

It is hard to select which part of Clegg's address at the UN was more cringe-worthy. It certainly puts him ahead of Jack Straw, who set the previous benchmark for arse-crawling foreign policy statements.

Straw, of course, had the Muslim voters in his Blackburn constituency in mind when, as foreign secretary, he claimed blame on behalf of Britain for the problems of the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Nobody in either area even commented on his nostra culpa: unlike the self-abusing Labour pukes, the peoples once part of the British Empire have more important things to do than to wallow in a distant and ambivalent past.

At least Straw's crawl had a strong basis in historical fact. Not so Clegg, who, confronted with the self-imposed mission of crawling up Indian and Muslim arses simultaneously, produced this gem:

Four centuries ago, the great [Islamic] Mughal emperor Akbar was legislating for religious freedom and equality in what is now India [actually conquered northern India, but what the hell], while in parts of Europe heretics were being burned at the stake [there goes the Roman Catholic vote].

Actually, Akbar ruled with much the same indifference to local cults as the British were to do later, although the insensitive British imperialists hanged offenders instead of getting war elephants to step on their heads, and offended against multiculturalism by abolishing suttee and thuggee.

That phrase alone might have won the title for Clegg, but then there was this gem: 

The United Kingdom will also show leadership by example. As fierce advocates of the international rule of law, we will practice what we preach. No nation can insist on the law, and then act as though it is above it.

Nice one. Leadership implies that someone may follow, an optimistic view of Britain's current world status. Plus declaring that Britain acted illegally in joining the Iraq invasion, although consistent with LibDem orthodoxy, is not Coalition policy - the Tories, after all, supported the invasion - and admits a legal liability that the Iraqis, who bear Britain a grudge for surrendering Basra to Shia extremists, may choose to exploit.

And finally there is this POS:

In recent years we have learned – in some cases the hard way – that democracy cannot be created by diktat. Freedom cannot be commanded into existence.

Let's see now: Italy, Germany, Japan are the more screamingly obvious exceptions to Clegg's newly-discovered principle of political science. And what about all those wars of national liberation? Finally, who in his right mind would argue that democracy creates freedom? Unless the rule of the majority is circumscribed by fundamental laws that the majority cannot change - which is not the case in Britain - freedom is an extremely fragile flower that may be trampled at will.