HERE are five words you haven’t heard too often over these difficult years: “Three cheers for Nick Clegg.” Yes, many will never forgive the deputy prime minister for his broken promises – and his poll ratings remain dire – but now, at last, there is a clear tick in the credit column.

I’m talking about Mr Clegg’s bold statement, on returning from Columbia, that our 40-year “war on drugs” has failed disastrously and it’s time to be more grown up.

The Liberal Democrat leader castigated the Conservatives for – like Labour before them – being too cowardly to talk about the issue, preferring to pose as “tough on drugs”.

Mr Clegg revealed the Lib Dems were investigating international alternatives to prohibition – as more nations embrace liberalisation or at least end the nonsense of jailing addicts.

And he said: “I want to end the tradition where politicians only talk about drugs reform when they have left office, because they fear the political consequences.”

I imagine this will be music to the ears of Mike Barton, the chief constable of Durham Police, who called for the decriminalisation of Class A drugs last September.

Mr Barton said the current system simply pumped billions of pounds into the hands of crime gangs, arguing for heroin and cocaine to be available safely from the NHS instead.

Letting dealers supply spiked drugs also causes enormous harm, with all those depressing overdoses of young people who don’t know what they are taking.

Few people know only black market heroin kills – pure heroin is harmless, linked only to nausea and constipation – so legalisation would end these needless deaths.

It’s the same reason why so many were blinded or paralysed until the US abandoned prohibition in favour of regulating another dangerous drug, our favourite drug – alcohol.

And it’s not as if prescribing heroin is unheard of. Indeed, for five years, Darlington had its own “shooting gallery”, as the treatment clinic was colourfully called.

But the trial was ended by the Coalition, which – ignoring evidence that it worked – instead funds a strictly time-limited recovery programme in Easington.

After a maximum of 15 months, unless they have been weaned off heroin, these addicts presumably go back to their dealers…or to much-costlier prison?

I started by calling for three cheers for Mr Clegg but, in truth, one cheer is more appropriate – because he raised more questions than he answered.

It’s far from clear the Lib Dem leader is prepared to go as far as legislation and regulation, as he fell back on that cliche of “calling for a debate”. One cartoon pictured a bandana- wearing Mr Clegg, hanging out of a camper van adorned with graffiti reading ‘Legalise” saying: “C’mon kids, I’m cool again.” And that will be the suspicion. That he, too, is posing – for youthful votes long lost – until he leads the debate he wants to start.

FIRST, Bishop Auckland Helen Goodman criticised pop legend Paul Simon - for pinching Scarborough Fair from Teesdale stonemasons – and now she’s gunning for George Clooney. The Hollywood heartthrob’s offence was to call for the British Museum to return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece, after 200 long years.

Arguing the museum needed international collections, Ms Goodman said: “How would George Clooney feel if he could only act in American films shown in the US?”