The post you are reporting:
i found this a fascinating read, i agree with him totally about the establishment neing rumbled.
courtesy of the indepndent.
It is 6am and Nick Clegg has had a largely wakeful night thanks to his two-year-old son Miguel, a sleep resister. But he surprises his bleary-eyed aides as they head for a Eurostar train to Paris with a neat insight into the phone-hacking crisis.
"The pillars of the British establishment are tumbling one after the other," he says. He points out that the casualties could be viewed on a trip down the River Thames - News International at Wapping (hacking); the banks in the City (the financial crisis); Parliament (MPs' expenses) and nearby Scotland Yard (hacking).
The deputy prime minister senses a rare opportunity in the hacking scandal to carve out a separate niche. The Liberal Democrats have never wooed or been wooed by the media moguls. Unlike David Cameron and Ed Miliband, Mr Clegg did not attend Rupert Murdoch's annual summer party in London last month. He has twice been through the mincer of the ruthless Tory-supporting press machine - during the "Cleggmania" of last year's election and the ill-fated alternative-vote referendum in May.
On the 6.52am train from London St Pancras last Friday, Mr Clegg speaks with passion: "You have politicians falling to their knees ingratiating themselves with media moguls. You have too many vested interests tied up with each other. You have a culture of arrogance and impunity"
He was quick out of the traps last week, pressing Mr Cameron successfully for the public inquiry covering the police and the press to be headed by a judge. Mr Clegg believes the crisis offers an opportunity to clean up Britain's "rotten establishment". To reflect liberal values, of course. "The anger people feel is almost palpable. The question is how we harness that sense of outrage to build something better for the future."
Although the Press Complaints Commission is a "busted flush", he does not favour statutory regulation, which might give politicians "free rein" to shackle the newspapers. "I believe in a raucous, loud, free press."
The controversy offers Mr Clegg a welcome diversion from his party's own woes. For once, it is Mr Cameron's turn to feel the heat. But Mr Clegg knows he will not escape it for long. After a rout in May's local elections, the AV referendum and the continuing cloud of university tuition fees, Liberal Democrat activists are anxious. The voices who believe the party made a catastrophic mistake by getting into bed with the Conservatives will get louder at the party's conference in September.
"It has been really, really tough for us, this first year," Mr Clegg