Clegg-Bashing

It's not often that I find myself in the dubious position of being in agreement with Lord Mandelson, but today I am. The right-wing tory press (and I'm not going to say the party were behind this, but some of their leading members have been too quick to jump on it once the papers put it out there) are clearly rattled about Nick Clegg's performance in the polls and have taken aim squarely at him with both barrels. The timing, on the morning of the second debate, is surely no coincidence, but more about that later.

I must say at the outset that I am not Clegg's biggest fan - I think he is the weakest leader the Lib-Dems have had and find myseld nostalgic for the days of Ashdown and Kennedy. And I'm aldo reserving a note of caution until I see whether there is any substance to the allegations, but from what I've read so far they seem flimsy at best, the attempts by certain tories to link issues over very small private donations (about which they are yet to prove any wrong-doing) to the huge expenses scandal misusing huge amounts of public money is strained and desperate and I would expect Mr Clegg to prove his innocence over the next day. I also suspect that the right wing editors who published the story expect him to show he's done nothing wrong. That wasn't the point.

And this is where the timing comes in - the morning of the debate. It seems the aim of the newspapers was two-fold:

1. To throw Mr Clegg off his game and distract him from tonight's debate

2. To tarnsh him in the public's perception, even if only for a day, so that they hear what he has to say less favourably tonight and make it much harder for him to be perceived as the winner however well he does. Interestingly, this displays a complete lack of faith in their own man's abilities - take note voters, even his own media don't trust Cameron.

As such, this morning's papers represent the nastiest, ugliest and most manipulative side of British politics and the reason that so many people have become so disenchanted with what was on offer. Whether you like him or not, whether you agree with him or not - Clegg's performance in the last debate energised the campaign and started to get people re-engaging with politics. One of the reasons for his success was that people (rightly or wrongly) see him as offering something different from the old Labour-Tory opposition which most of the country seems disenchanhted with. From the hustings I went to last night, I would say that people aren't apathetic towards politics, they are angry and alienated. The real danger of tactics like this is that it just re-enforces that anger and alienation. It will switch people off from politics. There is not just an economic crisis in this country at the moment, there is a much deeper seated democratic one and a victory for any party on May 6th at the price of switching more people off from the political system would be a disaster for Britain far worse than the budget deficit. I hope it won't have this effect, but I fear there is a real danger that rather than drumming up support for the tories this morning, the papers will have succeeded in lowering the turnout. The BNP must be delighted!