GENERAL ELECTION 2010: EU ZEALOT NICK CLEGG’S BID TO RETURN ELGIN MARBLES

As an MEP, the Lib Dem leader berated the British Museum for guarding the statues, saying it was like displaying Big Ben’s clock in the Louvre. He told a Tory MEP who dared to criticise his campaign: “you appear to have lost your marbles.”

The issue highlights his strident pro-European views and helps shatter his attempt in Thursday’s leaders’ debate to portray his party as moderate on EU affairs.

A Sunday Express survey of his 12 MEPs’ voting records reveals them to be among the most fanatically pro-EU politicians in Europe. They have consistently spearheaded efforts to transfer sovereignty away from Britain and boost a bureaucratic superstate.

They have voted against reforming MEPs’ expenses and against holding a sleaze inquiry into a ­senior official but they have voted for the promotion of the grand EU project in British schools.

Mr Clegg, who is married to a Spaniard and whose father is half-Russian, was a Euro MP for the East Midlands between 1999 and 2004. In 2002, he helped organise the Marbles In Exile conference in the Strasbourg parliament where he demanded Britain return them to the Parthenon in Athens.

The statues were taken with the permission of the Ottoman Empire by the Earl of Elgin in 1801.

When Tory MEP Roger Helmer objected to EU resources being used to promote the campaign, Mr Clegg wrote back: “During the opening of the Marbles In Exile exhibition yesterday, I took the opportunity to read out your message. Everyone agreed that you appear to have lost your marbles.”