Deputy PM Nick Clegg has failed to participate in a private meeting with Queen Elizabeth because of his outstanding engagements, which include being present at the athlete’s parade to show gratitude to Britain’s splendid Olympians. Nick Clegg’s spokesman has stated that the Palace had been informed in advance and it was okay with Clegg’s inability to participate.

When numerous ministers were elevated to the Cabinet last week by PM David Cameron, the Queen expressed her readiness to arrange a meeting at which they would be inaugurated as Privy Counsellors.

Traditionally, the Queen resides at Scotland’s Balmoral Castle during this phase of the year. Thus, the new appointees in the UK Cabinet had to journey to the breathtaking castle, where the council was organised at Monday noon. Nick Clegg, the Lord President of the Council, evidently had other plans.

Clegg, instead of presenting himself at the inauguration, dispatched Lord Strathclyde, the Leader of the Lords, to represent him at the council. Before this full meeting, Clegg was scheduled to experience a personal audience with the Queen.

Clegg’s representative has said that the latest ad hoc Privy Council was constituted at short notice. The Liberal Democrat MP made arrangements to ensure that a Cabinet Minister represents him at the Council meeting in Scotland.

The Lib Dem leader missed a private audience with the Queen in July too as he sent Kenneth Clarke as his representative to Windsor for participating in a gathering of the Privy Council. The reason given was that there was important business in the Commons which had to be implemented.

Meanwhile, the MP for Sheffield Hallam has become entangled in an unseemly controversy after his office inscribed and publicised a speech, in which Clegg decried the detractors of the UK government’s plan seeking to give homosexual couples the same rights as heterosexual couples. Clegg dubbed opposers of homosexual marriages as ‘bigots’, a word that his office has attempted to withdraw.

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