There are many things I do not like in the world. Slavery is one. Violence is another. The thing I cannot stand the most though, out of all the various faults I find, is hypocricy. And, thanks to the leaking of what is supposed to be Clegg's opinion on 4 of his shadow cabinet, we get to see this in bucketloads in LDV's comments. Here's some extracts:

This is disastrous for the party - Nick Clegg should offer a public apology to his shadow cabinet colleagues and in view of the unbelievable stupidity of this gaffe the Party should consider if he is still fit to lead it!

It is clear that Clegg is a disaster for the party. The problem is it would look very bad if we pushed him out on these grounds just a year after electing him.

So here we have the ideal situation - he admits he has made a very stupid mistake, a mistake of such rank stupidity, discussing serious confidential matters in full hearing of the public, that he would undoubtedly be calling for the resignation of a government minister had a government minister done something similar. And he says “On those grounds, I have no choice to resign”.

We all say “boo-hoo, how sad our leader had had to resign, but what a jolly decent chap he is to resign on such a matter of principle”. And we think “Oh thank God, he has gone”.

As I commented, it's frankly disgusting that people are deciding to use the opporunity as some sort of grounds to try and force him to resign. As I also commented, the fact that these same people are making angry sounds over Green's arrest is, to be frank, complete and utter hypocricy. Why? Because the arguement that Green shouldn't have been arrested is because he, as an Opposition minister, is obliged to hold the government to account. Similarly, Clegg is obliged to hold opinions on the effectiveness of his team. Just because somebody that sat behind him on a plane decided to make the news public, doesn't mean that he isn't allowed to hold an opinion. Or would the leader-haters rather we had a party where every word spoken by our MPs is closely vetted, to make sure there can be no possible gaffs?

This is not a public issue. This is a private issue within the party, about a small number of angry individuals who simply have no desire to move with the times. It is, to be frank, shocking.