Nick Clegg's foolish fantasy comes crashing down In the end, it was less a rebellion, more a mercy killing. In the face of the implacable hostility of many Tory MPs, and Labour's cynical manoeuvring, the Coalition's parliamentary managers withdrew their timetable for the House of Lords Reform Bill, rather than force a vote they were certain to lose. Parliament will, in theory, return to the issue in the autumn. In practice, Nick Clegg, the plan's architect, has been sent scurrying back to the drawing board. For the Liberal Democrats, this is a brutal lesson in parliamentary reality, and the difficulty of transferring their wide-eyed schemes for constitutional reform into legislative fact. It also shows that just because David Cameron promises something, it does not mean he can deliver it - especially when that something is a largely improvised attempt to rewrite the British constitution, for which public demand is utterly lacking. On the Conservative side, we should be grateful to the many MPs who, in taking up arms against this unwanted measure, risked their career prospects for their principles. Such a widespread willingness to take a stand makes for awkward party management, but better government. Even though Mr Cameron's support for this measure was thin at best, it was instructive to see the Government wilting, yet again, in the face of backbench pressure. In the wake of this affair, there will doubtless be a greater distance between the two sides of the Coalition, and probably an attempt to torpedo the boundary review, in open defiance of the agreed legislative programme. Yet the dire state of the economy, the urgency of the task of deficit reduction, and the need to see through significant reforms in education and welfare should be enough to keep the marriage together - especially given the electoral oblivion that awaits the Lib Dems in any imminent poll. The most sensible course would be for ministers to remember the supervening necessity that brought them together, and redouble their efforts to salvage the economy, an issue that the voters genuinely care about. But if the Deputy Prime Minister must play his constitutional games, we suggest that he rewrites his Bill to focus not on replacing the Lords with a politicised chamber of his own creation, but on improving the existing system. A good basis would be the proposals made by various experts, including his own former party leader, Lord Steel, and cited on these pages recently by Lord Kakkar and Nicholas Soames. These would hone the Lords into more of a working chamber, introducing provisions for retirement, resignation and - where necessary - expulsion. Or Mr Clegg can continue with his folie de grandeur, and risk further humiliation.