A Brief Overanalysis of That Photo of Nick Clegg Dancing to 5ive

Emotions are difficult to contain, aren't they. Animals don't have emotions. You never see a dog have an emotion. A dog has never cried in the bath because it's just read Angela's Ashes. A dog has never got loudly angry at a difficult corned beef tin. But we do, that's what humans do – we breath in happiness and burn out rage, like massive, sobbing bellows – and that's what separates us from the animals.

Here is a picture of Nick Clegg having an emotion. In fact, here's a picture of Nick Clegg having a thousand emotions at once. Emotions are exploding within Nick Clegg like fizzing bottle rockets popping into dust in the clear dark November sky. Dip a finger in this photograph and just have a taste of all the emotions Nick Clegg is rocking: relief, exhaustion, despair – yes. But also in the mix are ecstasy and terror. This is a man – semi-jobless, now, listless, without an anchor or a rope – but a man who is joyful, who is free, who is losing his shit at a wrap party disco.

Let's look at the pose, here. The pose can be one of three poses, and I'm going to have to lay out each, in turn, and then we're all going to have to decide what emotion Nick Clegg's arm is doing right now. Options:

— Nick Clegg's arm is doing the "This Guy! This Guy Right Here, Guys! This Cunt Right Here, My Boy Callum, What Up Callum? This Fucking Guy Right Fucking Here Guys!" thing;

— Nick Clegg's arm is doing the "I Have Had A Trace Amount of Gak And You Know How Gak Makes Me Bossy And Aggressive Towards Service Staff Doing Their Job, You Know Miriam, You Know How I Get On The Gak, But Fucking So Help Me Miriam, Swear to Fucking God, if That Kid Doesn't Hop Over Here With Six Jagerbombs And An Ouzo I'm Going to Trash Him, Swear to Fucking God Miriam, Swear to God" thing;

— Nick Clegg's penis hurts, and he is alerting a doctor (there is a doctor at this party, and Nick Clegg knows this) (they are friends and they go way back) to the situation with his stinging penis;

I think we're going to have to disregard the stinging penis theory, if nothing else but for legal reasons. Same goes with trace amount of gak. That leaves us only with the only arm motion on that list that is an arm motion of hope: the motion that says, "It's Ya Boy, Callum Morton". Callum Morton – the man in this photo who is making the "haha, sorry about my embarrassing uncle guys, he's had a bad five years" face – is a Liberal Democrat councillor in Sutton. So it is safe to say this is a Liberal Democrat Party party. A party attended exclusively by people who walk to Whole Foods especially to get the good kind of hummus after doing their main shop at Sainsbury's.

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Nick Clegg is bigging up his main boi Callum M because the soundtrack to this photograph is popular turn-of-the-millennium boyband, 5ive. We know this from the Facebook comments thread for the photo. It's not technically known for certain what 5ive song is currently playing in the background, but I can tell you for fucking sure that it's 'If Ya Getting Down'.

Look at this man's face:

This is the face of a man who is listening to the opening notes and the spoken word intro to 'If Ya Getting Down' and he knows it is about to go off. This is the lipbite of a man who knows that Jay from 5ive is about to fucking kill it over an Indeep sample.

There are many parallels between the demise of popular British bad-boy boyband 5ive and the Liberal Democrats. Shorn of their talisman (Jay from 5ive, Clegg), they rapidly lose numbers (Abz from 5ive, 40+ Lib Dem MPs too numerous to list), and now look a depleted force, occasionally trotted out on ITV2 to do their old dance routines or doing a sad, hollow impression of that posh braying sound MPs have to make when they agree with something in Parliament.

In many ways, the Liberal Democrats and the three remaining members of 5ive are one and the same. Before you ask: John Pugh is Sean and Tom Brake is Scott. Big Timmy Farron is Ritchie.

We're allowing the badboy pop of turn-of-the-millenium boyband 5ive to derail our thoughts about Nick Clegg. Because what is he thinking, here? Look at him: a powerful A-pose of relaxed self-power, one hand in the air, another draped over the shoulder of a councillor from Sutton. There is beer in this photo. Nick Clegg has consumed one or more units of alcohol. "You can't tell me I can only drink port and eat cheese with it, Dave," he is thinking. "Yes I will have a vodka and orange, and I will bloody enjoy it." Sing it from the rooftops: Nick Clegg Is Free.

Consider, also, the shirt. When he opened up that extra button on his shirt before getting in the cab there, he thought, in full: "Yeah. I don't need to button up any more. Instead of unbuttoning one button, I'm going to do two. I'm going to try something new, for a change." Free of the contractual obligations of his parliamentary standing, he doesn't need to adhere to your fusty fashion norms. This is a Nick Clegg who is free as a bird. This is a Nick Clegg who – yes! – who can walk into the shirt section of BHS marked "jazz-casual" and spend £35 on a night out shirt. Because fuck it, that's why.

World, meet Clegg 2.0: yes, he might look like a dad who goes out to his shed to smash model railway sets with a hammer instead of having a normal human emotion, but he's actually the complete opposite: free, at ease, without sin or responsibility. Yes: students might hate him forever, due to all those crumple-faced lies. But dammit he's going to listen to some 5ive in a room above a pub and escape the grim dark tug of reality for a bit. He's going to bite the fuck out of his lip and have a fucking pint.

Tim Farron, one of the smoking shards of debris that remains part of the Liberal Democrat party, last week said history would be kinder to Nick Clegg than the voters were. That's probably true. For his entire five-year tenure as deputy prime minister, he was essentially one of those flimsy bamboo sticks you grow plants up against, only the plant was a Japanese Knotweed-esque Tory government that showed its hand last week when voted into power and the first two things they did was vote to kill foxes and propose to tweak the human rights act. How many times did Nick Clegg sit in a big braying room of Tories and go, "Can we not kill foxes, please? Come on, guys. Please can we have one meeting where you don't try and kill foxes?" How many times did Nick Clegg have to stay behind after a deep-level government meeting and say, "Can I have a quick word, Dave? It's about Human Rights: gotta have 'em, I'm afraid. People really don't like being tortured." And now look at him: free as the wind, in his grooviest dad-shirt, hands in the air and loving life. Sheffield Hallam, you've just voted in Britain's raviest councillor.

You go get it, Nick Clegg. You go and listen to that 5ive song and lose your shit. Because, as a wise philosopher once said, "dance 'til you drop and don't stop until it goes pop."

"Dance," Abz from 5ive added. "Dance how you wanna dance."

@joelgolby

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