Alas, poor Clegg.

Oh, dear. Poor Liberal Democrats.

Nick Clegg seems to have tried to take the political high ground here. Having upped the ante last week on the European issue, presumably in an attempt to expose the hidden fault lines which must still run through the Conservative party and are increasingly plaguing Labour, he has now got himself into an awful twist.

As one of the Moderation Stationmaster's staff points out, if Clegg had directed his party to vote "no" on a Lisbon Treaty referendum they would have looked vindictive, whereas if he had required them to support the referendum, they would have looked weak and indecisive. But the end result - insisting that they abstain - just looked weird.

There's nothing wrong with Clegg's view - that the real debate is in fact over whether Britain should stay in the EU or not. He's right to see the Lisbon Treaty as a straw man for general public frustration with the Union. But if he believes that the path to a sensible resolution of all this is reached by moderation and consensus, then he was ill-advised to use a three-line whip to reach it, especially when a free vote would have given the same message without the policy contortions.

Seems to me another instance of moderation and common sense being squeezed out by the control-freakery and tribalism of our present system. Victorian prime ministers would be scratching their heads in puzzlement.