Nick Clegg the comeback kid? I wouldn’t bet against it

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/06/nick-clegg-comeback-kid-election-lib-dem-leader

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I am buying Cleggs. Every time I read that the Liberal Democrats are heading for electoral disaster, or a snap leadership election after 8 May, or a crisis of identity, resources and trajectory – or all of the above – I call my broker and pick up a few more. I am not sure, you see, that Nick Clegg can be killed by conventional weapons.

Consider, for a start, the stage on which he stood last Thursday, as he and six other party leaders took part in the only comprehensive debate of this election. The movement he leads is no longer the party of protest, the party of “none of the above”. That once omnivorous role has been divided up: on the left, to the Greens; on the right, to Ukip.

Considered another way, the dissenting vote formerly claimed by the Lib Dems has been parcelled out by nation: to the SNP, to Plaid Cymru and to Nigel Farage’s party, which is the party of the English twitching net curtain and of people cycling to the nearest hospital to complain about HIV-positive foreigners. The formation of the complex political landscape on which this election is being fought was in large part triggered by the Lib Dems ditching their old role in 2010 and seeking a new one. We are all citizens of Clegg’s Britain.

Tenacity is part of the Lib Dem DNA

Naturally, I grasp the case against the deputy prime minister. The Cleggmania of the leaders’ debates five years ago barely lasted until polling day (Nicola Sturgeon, take note.) In coalition, his party’s ratings have tanked. Clegg didn’t get electoral reform for the House of Commons, a new upper house, or a green revolution. The Lib Dems have one MEP left in the European parliament and only five MSPs at Holyrood – a savage and precipitous decline, considering that they were in coalition in Scotland as recently as 2007. The tuition fees debacle has left a deep scar on the Lib Dem soul, and (as I disclosed in my book on the coalition, In It Together) heralded a period in which, as Clegg confided to colleagues: “I wasn’t really leading.”

So why keep hold of those shares? First, because Clegg, though visibly weary, is not visibly bored.

On Thursday evening, he communicated his ambition to turn a party that once seemed to be no more than the parliamentary wing of a versatile campaign group into a junior party of government. It was remarkable to see the deputy prime minister take on the prime minister over “ideologically driven cuts”, and “the chaos in people’s lives” that (he alleged) would be generated by Tory policy. One saw real anger flash in the eyes of David Cameron – just as fear registered in Ed Miliband’s expression as Clegg pushed him to apologise for Labour overspending and for “crashing the British economy”. The Lib Dem leader was denied his Frost-Nixon moment by the debate format: others weighed in, and the moment was lost. But the message was clear enough.

As the voters grow less inclined to elect single-party governments, Clegg wants the Lib Dems to be the ideological ballast in new partnerships: heart for the Tories, spine for Labour. The presence of the Lib Dems in this government has ensured that the dramatic raising of the personal allowance has become the heart of income tax policy, in spite of the austerity that snapped around it like crocodile jaws. The pupil premium is no less important to the coalition’s education record. The reform of welfare would have been much more radical without Clegg’s braking intervention. Those Lib Dems who say the cost has been too high should explain what, exactly, they achieved in decades of powerlessness.

“Nick still has work to do,” says one close friend, brushing aside the notion that the deputy PM is “demob happy”. If there is a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, Clegg wants to be in the thick of it, making the case for staying in – as he did last year in two broadcast debates with Farage. If there is no referendum, because Ed Miliband is in No 10, Clegg does not want to leave the definition of progressive politics to the Labour leader. He may not, of course, have much choice in the matter. But to the extent that he does, he wants to remain on the pitch.

Second, his chances of doing so are not as feeble as orthodoxy suggests. In recent days, I have been struck by Tory and Labour strategists independently remarking in conversation upon the unexpected resilience of Lib Dem “fortress seats”: the hard core of its 56 constituencies.

The party is fighting a countrywide campaign, of course, but took a decision last year to fight its principal battles as byelections, each requiring a bespoke constituency strategy that usually depends on the Lib Dem incumbent or challenger more than his or her affiliation with the tarnished national brand.

This is the ground war of elections that defies the psephology of “uniform national swings” and the high politics of Westminster and Whitehall.

For instance: Farage may still be strutting on the national stage, but, as the Mail on Sunday revealed yesterday, a ComRes poll commissioned last month showed him in danger of coming third in South Thanet. At the very least, there is a gap between the national and the local.

Related: Why I heckled David Cameron during the party leaders’ debate | Victoria Prosser

The resurgence in pavement politics, bolstered by localised digital campaigning, is often attributed to the winning 2008 Obama strategy. But in truth, it is what the Lib Dems have long been good at. They know they are going to lose seats this time. They may even, conceivably, lose Sheffield Hallam, Clegg’s own constituency. But tenacity is part of the Lib Dem DNA. It takes a lot to dislodge them from a seat where they have readied themselves for siege.

In this most curious of elections, Clegg could lose – and still win. If he holds on to 30 seats, or even 25, he may yet find himself in a position of great strength. On Friday, to take an example, the poll aggregator electionsetc.com forecast that the Tories would win 300 seats, while electionforecast.co.uk indicated that Cameron’s total would be 284.

Either outcome would keep the Lib Dem leader squarely in the game. Electorally battered, he could nonetheless be back in the cabinet office, negotiating yet again. His circle likes to quote Mary Harney, the former tánaiste and leader of the Irish Progressive Democrats: “The worst day in government is better than the best day in opposition.” That’s true, and it rings especially true in an election when the stakes are so high.

Time to get on to my broker.