If an MP such as Tim Farron thinks the fees policy is progressive, should he vote against just because he once signed a pledge promising to do so?
Yes, I was right. In all the swirling drama of student protests over the tuition fees hike and the WikiLeaks cyberwars I did hear Tim Farron MP, the Lib Dem president-elect, say something completely daft about how he goes about his job.
I heard the MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale on the radio, but you can catch the BBC1 Politics Show version here. Basically what Master Tim is saying is that the coalition package for raising tuition fees – doubling, not tripling them, in most cases – is much more progressive than Labour's existing formula or the Browne review, but he's going to vote against it anyway.
Why so? Farron is presumably dimly aware of Edmund Burke's famous dictum about owing his electors in Bristol his judgment above mere loyalty, the idea that an MP is a representative, not a delegate. But he's been trawling the studios explaining that "if you sign a pledge you make yourself a kind of delegate on that issue".
In other words, he admires what Vince Cable has achieved – civil servants had to model 50 or so different versions, so I'm told – to make the package work better, especially for part-time students who are often the poorest, as Farron notes in his TV interview.
But the party president-elect will still be voting against it tonight because – like all other vote-hungry Lib Dem candidates – he signed that "no fees hike" pledge which Nick Clegg was silly enough to sign too, even though he'd publicly attempted to change the policy because he knew it wasn't grown-up.
Good or bad? I imagine posters will have varying views, not least because many people hate what they regard as the marketisation of higher education. Paradoxically, many also point to the merits of the US system – as David Lammy did the other day – one which is highly marketised, yet also the globally dominant university system, attracting smart kids from all over.
My view is like Burke's, that an MP owes his constituents his judgment and that Tim Farron would look less of a twerp if he said: "I was wrong; Nick and Vince have made a policy silk purse out of a sow's ear and I will have the courage to vote with them." As David Davis and many other MPs have shown, voters respect judgment, especially if they respect their MP.
Farron won re-election easily on 6 May. Unlike in many Lib Dem-held marginals there can't be many students on Westmorland's fells (note my sensitive "sow's ear" usage; are there no sows on England's upland farms?) and many local voters may even feel that the kids are lucky to go to college in such large numbers.
For what it's worth – probably not much in the current emotional atmosphere – the admired Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) concurs with the Farron judgment that the coalition package is more progressive, though rather too complicated.
I think I just heard the IFS spokesman also saying that more young people from poor backgrounds have been enjoying the benefits of higher education in recent years, too, a tribute to Labour's efforts that will also be drowned out in the emotion of the moment.
In a similar vein may I commend Philip Cowley, the Nottingham University political scientist who has made himself an expert on "revolts and rebellions" at Westminster. He spend a decade trying to persuade Fleet Street that, far from being supine, Labour backbenchers revolted in heroic numbers after 1997 – but were thwarted by the size of Tony Blair's majorities and other factors, including Tory votes.
Here's a helpful bit of calm context on third party revolts from the admirable Cowley and Mark Stuart.
My working assumption remains that the coalition will win its votes tonight quite comfortably. Farron told the BBC that some Labour MPs are ashamed of being whipped to vote against what they privately regard as a better package than their own – so he's not the only one being silly today.
Let's see how the drama unfolds inside the Commons and on the streets outside, where I hope to try and interest students in the IFS analysis; who knows, we may all learn something. Meanwhile an even larger battle is being waged by rival cyber-warriors, one of whom, the 22-year-old software engineer quoted in today's Guardian as Coldblood, was interviewed on Radio 4's Today programme this morning.
Coldblood says he is attacking credit card firms that have abandoned WikiLeaks and is doing so in the name of internet freedom, having started out several years back attacking the Church of Scientology.
At a time when global credit conditions are extremely fragile I'm not sure how farsighted it is to screw up the banking system even further – we'll all freeze if Coldblood succeeds – but the BBC's Evan Davis didn't ask that question.
"What are your politics?" he asked instead.
"I don't really know," replied the cyber-warrior.
Listeners sent in emails saying Evans should have asked: "Do you have a girlfriend?" It's always a good question for geeks.