22 April, 2010

The Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Express have the knives out for Clegg today.

Last week gave them some lovely headlines and the pundits had a lot of fun watching the two big parties squirm.  An election with no hero suddenly had a loveable underdog.

But enough’s enough and it looked like it was getting out of hand.   Time to undermine him ahead of tonight’s TV debate.  Time to put the word “Nazi” next to the word “Clegg”.

But imagine you were switched on to Clegg last week.  This guy, you might have thought, who talks sense, who tells it how it is, who stands outside the fray – he has something about him.  Sure, your interest in Clegg was ‘soft’ support; you could be persuaded out of it in a flash.  But now the establishment, which of course includes the press, is running scared and turning against him – is that going to put you off?

The Outsider is being pushed outside?  That doesn’t make you change your mind.  It reminds you why you felt we needed a breath of fresh air in the first place.  It confirms his USP.

Clegg won’t be laughing all the way to the Bristol studios tonight, but he will surely see opportunity here.  Play his cards right – put the press in the same box as the old parties – and some of that soft support will be hardening nicely, thank you very much.