Editorial Friday 23 March 2012: Nick Clegg didn't refuse to kill Health Bill after PM threat to make a Lib Dem Health Secretary

Yesterday I read and retweeted this blog piece by the New Statesman's political editor Rafael Behr, which claims that Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was dissuaded by PM That Nice Mr Cameron from putting the Health Bill out of its misery during the 'pause'.

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Behr cites information that "the quid pro quo for blocking Tory reform of the health service would be total Lib Dem ownership of the issue in the future. In other words, if Clegg wanted to block Lansley, he would have to accept having a Lib Dem secretary of state replace him in the next reshuffle and take responsibility for whatever happened next.

"The message from Cameron was: you break it, you fix it. Wisely, Clegg decided that was not an opportunity he felt like taking".

I wasn't at all sure about it, as a few of my subsequent tweets mentioned, and started to have a dig.

The story could politely be described as wrong, according to the Deputy PM's office; Lib Dem staffers who've been at Cowley Street a decent while; and a senior Lib Dem MP with proper knowledge of intra-Coalition negotiations.

The basic idea genuinely makes very little sense. The Lib Dems would have made themselves look quite popular and principled on this, although it would have seriously increased tensions between the PM and his right-wing backbenchers.

The offer (or 'threat'), too, is somewhat unbelievable. Health is a big-spending, high-profile department: the Coalition's realpolitik simply wouldn't have given it to a Lib Dem.

More to the point, the obvious candidate, Norman Lamb, might have been able to do the job disconcertingly well.

The timing struck me as interesting: the blog was published the day after Restoration-faced Chancellor George Osborne's new budget had not been a triumph of popular opinion.

I can't help wondering whether Rafael Behr's source was trying to paint a clever picture of the leadership of the party memorably described by John Stuart Mill in Parliament as follows: "I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it".