David Cameron now commands less authority, less legitimacy and less popularity than John Major did at his lowest ebb. Traditionally, incumbents only lose support, but it's hard to imagine how one can go down from auctioning off cabinet posts to the third party in the hope that their back-benchers will vote against their own consciences.

There are those who wonder why people of my generation are disillusioned with politics: they ignored us when we took to the streets in our hundreds of thousands against the Iraq war, they blamed us for breaking Britain, saddled us with mind-boggling debt, then they said "There's no jobs, son, you're out of luck" quickly adding "now move out of your parents and get off benefits, you're a sponge" and now Clegg woos us only to submit sickeningly to an Etonian slug and his party of cannibalistic lizards.

One can only guess at the grand perversion of the initiation ceremonies that have exhausted the Lib Dem leadership since election night as they have pawed, sucked, grimaced and flexed their way to some hollow facsimile of the taste of power. Their every spasm, their every whimper, their every submission a betrayal of every voter who, disillusioned, cast their lot for the unsullied idealists.

We were wrong to believe.