Fortunately, a colleague in the room went next and pointed out to Clegg that much worse had been said by the peeress on exactly his watch. This year, she met Hamas's political leader, Khaled Mesha'al, in Damascus and praised him as "shrewd, plausible and actually very likeable". Last year, she shared a platform in London with the British Palestinian activists and fellow suicide-bomber wannabe Azzam Tamimi, describing him as "very brave", and declaring that he "deserves a tribute from all of us". The speech to her London audience singled out the "Jewish lobby" in the US as being responsible for all the world's ills. It was almost as though she was auditioning for a role in Channel 4's documentary by Peter Oborne "Inside Britain's Israel Lobby".

Anyhow, Clegg dodged the question by pretending that he had become LibDem leader a year after he actually had. So I wrote to him asking for clarification on this matter. Here is what Tonge had said on the following dates. Here was the date he became leader. Would he kindly take the action he had promised at a public meeting?

After two months of silence from Clegg, a newspaper picked the story up in a quiet bit of August and Clegg's office dismissed it as "selective quotes from a meeting of which there is no recording or transcript".

Then a month later, Clegg was interviewed in the Jewish Chronicle by Martin Bright, who described him as "beyond angry. Incandescent almost gets it, but that still doesn't capture the full fury of the man". Surely something to behold. But what was it that made Clegg so terrifyingly, tremblingly enraged? My letter? No, it was, pace Clegg, "the very suggestion that I might explicitly or tacitly give cover to racism, I find politically abhorrent and personally deeply offensive."

In his defence, he explains that he is "half-Dutch, quarter Russian, quarter British" and "married to a Spaniard". Perhaps this apparently educated man is unable to see that this has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not his party harbours a conspiracy theorist and bigot on its benches. Having been asked specific questions and having been caught lying, Clegg simply took refuge in objecting to a personal accusation of racism that had not been made.

Why do I tell this sorry tale of an unsorry man? Partly to illustrate that this kind of behaviour is endemic yet unpunished in our politics and media. And also simply to reassure myself and others that it is natural for us to still feel disappointment at this state of things.