Never again shall we see Nick Clegg in the run up to polling day, posing for a photograph, poised to sign a pledge.

This, I guarantee.

The drama over tuition fees has finished him off as a politician who can be believed. He is now routinely ridiculed.

The pledge is a ball and chain around his ankle. It is an issue that is not going away.

And now 104 Lib Dem parliamentary candidates (2010 vintage) are pleading with him to do what he promised and vote against any tuition fee rise in this Parliament.

Their petition says: “The wording of this pledge clearly indicated that this would be unconditional; regardless of whether the party was in Government or in opposition.”

The outrage felt by many over Clegg’s mendacious pledge opens up a space for politicians who are honest with the voters.

The National Union of Students made a big mistake with the wording of the tuition fees pledge.

They should have asked candidates, if elected, to stand down from Parliament if the pledge were broken.

Anyway… I note that the Lib Dem candidate for Pendle, the barrister, Afzal Anwar, is not included in the petition’s 104 backers.

For the record (and in case he is toying with the idea of standing again) this is what he told students, in his mangled syntax, at Nelson and Colne College in April 2010.

Question from the floor:

“Lord Patten, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, recently argued that universities should be able to charge as much as they want for tuition fees. With record numbers applying to university and a government imposed cap on the number of places, what would you say to those who believe it is totally unfair to aspirational young people?”

Afzal Anwar:

“I totally agree with the questioner. It is very unfair and that’s why we need to change and that’s why it is only the Liberal Democrats, still, after all those years, are saying that we would scrap the tuition fees.

If it was not for the tuition fees maybe I might not have gone to university because, at that time, we didn’t have to pay.

A lot of students nowadays have to make this decision and think quite carefully because I have met quite a few people who have just finished university now and they have got debts amounting up to £30,000 and then, in the present employment climate, where the jobs are not available, with that kind of debt that they have, they are struggling. Then the housing crisis.

You know, all these things actually produce an unfair society. So we Liberal Democrats, for that reason, disagree.

I think, you know, education is the most important thing for any young child so that for him to go to university should not be determined by their parental background, whether they are from a rich family or from a poor family so, to provide those equal opportunities, I disagree with what was suggested by this Conservative peer.

I think, instead, we should (scrap? unclear) these tuition fees.

We have proposed a plan. Due to the economic circumstances we cannot do it straight away but what we have said, in the first year we will, you know, stop the tuition fees for the last year’s students of the first degree and then roll it back on a yearly basis over a six year period.

Thank you.

Make of that what you will.

But I think the meaning is clear.

Sort of.

Blair does GOD

Who won the Munk debate in Toronto between Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens on religion and whether it is a force for good in the world?

By common consent, Hitchens.

Blair seems defensive, apologetic and hesitant and doesn’t even try to engage with Hitchens on the metaphysics.

But, superb television.