Bunking off leaves Nick Clegg a clear winner

Nick Clegg’s week is best summed up in three words Cornwall, cuts and cards.

Wednesday was Autumn Statement day, one of the Government’s biggest set pieces in the calendar. But Nick was nowhere to be seen.

Instead of taking his usual place on the benches alongside George Osborne he decided to bunk off.

His excuse was that he went to Cornwall to talk to “normal people”.

Of all the places to go looking for ordinary folk, Cornwall, where they call outsiders grockles, ranks alongside going into coalition with the Conservatives as one of the Lib Dem leader’s less inspired decisions.

But he was trying to limit the damage from teaming up with the Tories.

There’s a lot of marginal Lib Dem seats in the West and Clegg was presumably hoping to distract enough wavering voters from what was going on at Westminster.

For Osborne’s update on the state of the nation’s finances was largely a horror show.

Gloomy Tories cleverly depressed expectations, so the Chancellor was able to present the accounts as bad but better than terminally awful. And, fair play to him, his stamp duty reforms are a stroke of genius.

Instead of two cliff edge levels of duty the rate is tapered, an idea the Chancellor took from Holyrood.

Devolution was meant to see the smaller, nimbler assemblies innovate in their approach to government. The SNP’s John Swinney did just that with his new Scottish land tax. But Osborne didn’t just steal it, he improved it.

Unlike the SNP measure that comes into force in the spring, Osborne acted immediately, changing the law that day so the new rates applied overnight.

The Westminster version, with more steps to the taper, is more progressive than the Scottish one trashing claims the SNP has the monopoly on social justice.

And it neutered the Labour mansion tax policy that was gaining ground by hammering those with the biggest homes hardest.

Myleene Klass who must give Ed Miliband nightmares in her current Littlewoods ad by pointing at things in the same way she did when she told the Labour leader: “You can’t just point at things and tax them” will not be happy.

But, like Clegg’s trip west, the stamp duty stunt was a distraction.

Osborne raced through the line in his speech about freezing benefits and only after the economics experts got to work on it the next day did it become clear that, in the wonks’ words, the UK faces “colossal cuts” to come.

This parliament was supposed to be the one with all the savings. But the £62 billion banked in cuts so far won’t be enough to balance the books. Under the Chancellor’s plans there’s £86 billion more to come in the next parliament.

We’re not even halfway through Osborne’s economic belt-tightening. The Chancellor who lost weight on the 5:2 diet, fasting two days a week, is applying something more like a 2:5 diet to the finances.

No wonder Clegg doesn’t want to be associated with that outlook.

Treasury No 2, Danny Alexander, may have been out defending the Autumn Statement on the airwaves, but it’s beginning to look like that’s as much as sign that the party’s given up on him and his Inverness seat as any commitment to the Coalition cause.

Clegg, though, shouldn’t be written off. At the end of the week, the party leaders released their Christmas cards.

While David Cameron looked solid alongside some Chelsea pensioners and Ed Miliband looked like he was trying to appear normal, messing around with his kids, Clegg stole Christmas.

His card featured him and wife Miriam the best-looking political wife and best because she’s a full-on feminist mucking around in a photo booth.

Clegg may have the most political woes of the leaders, but he looked genuinely happy and in love. And that makes him a winner.