Clegg's great-great-aunt was a spy!!!

The Murdoch-owned Times joins the Sowing-the-Seeds-of-Doubt Operation on Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems. The focus, this time, his "genetic inheritance".

The right-wing press thinks you are all a bunch of sub-human idiots.

The tabloids have been packed with crap and lies aimed at poisoning the atmosphere in the run-up to May 6, but you wouldn't have thought that even the "respected" (if Murdoch-owned) Times would decide to pay heed to his master's voice and join the very public massacre of Nick Clegg.

OK, I hear you saying. Surely a newspaper like the Times, Britain's most prestigious, would at least not get bogged down in rubbish. No doubt their angle will consist in the analysis of the Lib Dems' tax proposals.

Or maybe they will scrutinise their position on electoral reform. Or perhaps foreign policy, the war in Afghanistan, education, public services, immigration - all those subjects that are close to people's interests and concerns.

No. Today, the Times decided to run a story about Nick Clegg's great-great-aunt. Not even his wife, his mum or his dad. That's right, his great-great-aunt. Not because the British public is obviously gagging to know about her. But because it's another desperate attempt to cling onto anything, even the most remote and absurd crap, that may cast some doubt over the integrity of anybody who threatens the century-long Tory/Labour duopoly.

The reason? The woman, writes Ben Mackintyre, "was a Russian aristocrat, writer, spy and double agent" so, even though she may have popped her clogs in 1974, the Times insinuates, there may be "a bit of the baroness in Nick Clegg".

The article concludes that "The Liberal Democrat has often cited the inspiration of his Dutch mother and grandmother, who were interned in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, but he seldom mentions the equally remarkable female on the other side of his family tree".

As we all do, don't we? Because we all routinely talk about our great-great-aunts in daily life. Go through interviews with celebrities, politicians, public figures and rockstars and they're all -invariably- rambling on about nothing else but their great-great-relatives.

Another pathetic piece of right-wing journalism.