It is customary for a party leader to experience a “honeymoon period” with his colleagues and the country. In the case of Nick Clegg, however, it has been more akin to a one-night stand. For a political party that is actually the most united of the three on Europe to find itself the most divided in a key vote on the subject is an absolutely ridiculous outcome. To adopt a strategy that obliges three frontbench spokesmen to depart over the question is stranger still. For it then to be found that Mr Clegg spent much of Wednesday debating with these characters whether they might resign or be sacked put this saga into pure Monty Python territory. It was bizarre to engage in a Clause Four style of leadership - “back me or sack yourself” here. Liberal Democrats will meet for their spring conference in low spirits.

This calamity was also entirely unnecessary. There were two other options available to the Liberal Democrats that would have been more candid and less internally divisive. One was for Mr Clegg to have said bluntly that if he had been leader at the time of the last general election and had known how the Lisbon treaty would turn out, he would not have favoured a referendum, but a promise made by others then should and would be honoured by him. Alternatively, he might, again entirely frankly and openly, have acknowledged that all three of the main parties have positions on the Lisbon treaty that are less than totally coherent and convincing and that he would resolve this dilemma by allowing his MPs to cast a free vote. He would then have been able to trumpet his own anti-Westminster and pro-liberalism credentials, all the while urging Gordon Brown and David Cameron to do the same. Both these approaches would have had merit.

The approach that he settled on looks bad but is in reality even worse for Mr Clegg. There is a case for him picking an early fight with his party on a policy position, but surely it should have been a subject that matters to Liberal Democrats, such as the level of taxation or public service reform and not parliamentary procedure related to the Lisbon treaty. There are, in addition, only a limited number of occasions when any leader can engage in acts of theatre such as a walkout from the Commons chamber. To waste one of those opportunities on this affair was ludicrous. It placed the spotlight in the wrong place at the wrong time. When he was campaigning to be elected, Mr Clegg cast himself as the “outsider” at Westminster who would have no truck with its culture and procedures. Yet what could be more “insider” politics than an “abstention in person” on a three-line whip in the Commons?

After barely 12 weeks, there is already talk of the requirement to “relaunch” Mr Clegg and his leadership. He must learn the lessons from this debacle or else his potential as a transformative public figure will not be realised. Honesty would have been the best policy, not engaging in the kind of murky Westminster tactics that he and his party are supposed to have repudiated.

Mr Clegg will have to have a hard look at the advisory team around him after this debacle. He should not underestimate what has happened. He has damaged himself, his party and the public trust in politics. A referendum on the Lisbon treaty would have offered an opportunity for a serious debate about Europe. This the Lib Dems, of all people, should have relished.