What do Nick Clegg and I have in common? Yes, that’s right, we’ve both used the bottom left-hand corner of the Varsity Comment page to offload a few political bugbears. Look in the online Friday 23rd November issue on page 10 and you’ll see it. Someone ought to, if only to make poor Mr Calamity feel better. Clegg’s article is fairly hard to spot, because it’s been pushed into a corner to make way for the vitally important musings of a postgraduate student, Asad Kiryani. Not only did Clegg lack the PR nous to insist his article was in the centre of the page, he even allowed it to go out next to a lengthy piece (pages 13-14) slamming the Lib Dems for their dearth of ideas. Nice work.

I’m not suggesting this kind of mini-humiliation is enough to make Clegg unsuited for the Lib Dem leadership. But it doesn’t bode well. If elected, he will need to drum up media attention for a party rapidly fading into insignificance following Menzies Campbell’s anonymous leadership. PR, spin and presentation were dirty words for much of 2007, but the fad for Brownian dourness is already on the way out. 2008 could easily be David Cameron’s year. He will keep his PR head, as all those around him lose theirs.

Filed under: jonathanbirch, libdems, ukpolitics on December 11th, 2007