THE TELEGRAPH: The Tories are suffering because they don’t have enough solid policies, argues Simon Heffer .
The appointment of Nick Clegg as the nation’s favourite son-in-law is more easily explained than many would have us believe. The British public engages with politics only every four or five years. Until a week ago many did not know who Mr Clegg was. Indeed, a considerable number probably still do not. Then he appeared on television (the principal medium of engagement) with equal status to the Prime Minister and the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, yet with the incalculable bonus of being neither. The usually uninterested public, in this rare moment of engagement, did what it often does at such times, and became impressed by the last charlatan to come along.
The post of novelty charlatan was previously held by Mr Cameron. He established his claim to it when he sought the leadership of his party in 2005, with a performance of equivalent meretriciousness and vacuousness to that executed by Mr Clegg. He now knows how David Davis felt: elbowed aside by somebody more glamorous, more novel, more manipulative, less contaminated by the past. We must doubt that the Liberal Democrats will win the general election, or that Mr Clegg will be prime minister, but the change effected by the unprecedented television debate will have elements of permanence.
Despite being in third place in the polls, Labour is loving this. If the shift to the Lib Dems is remotely reflected at the ballot box, Labour will suffer badly; but the suffering of the Conservative Party, which we were told was going to win the election, is of a different order. There is rage (and I use that word with care) not just that Mr Cameron and his teenage advisers agreed to give Mr Clegg such a platform as these three debates offer; there is rage, albeit hypocritical and belated, that the entire strategy pursued by the Cameron regime over the past four and a half years has left the party so pathetically incapable of defending itself against this mountebank and his frequently preposterous party. For the strategy has left the Conservative Party – and Mr Cameron in particular, as was clear in the first televised debate – without much in the way of conviction to use to counter the Clegg soufflé, and apparently believing in nothing. >>> Simon Heffer | Tuesday, April 20, 2010
