Outside the Westminster village, very few people have even heard of the new Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg. Neither had many of the Liberal Democrat membership, judging by his narrow 511-vote victory over fellow-challenger, Chris Huhne on Tuesday.
At least Huhne had the advantage of having stood before, whereas Clegg lacks any real name recognition. Much of the next two years is going to be about greatly increasing the number of voters who recognise Clegg, before he can even start to sell Liberal Democrat policies. It will be an uphill task: two whole years into his leadership of the Conservative party, even someone as ‘famous’ as William Hague only achieved a name recognition rate of 84 per cent.
Clegg’s other main priority is to unite the Liberal Democrats after their third leadership contest in under two years. The membership has grown weary of such contests: over 10,000 fewer people voted for Clegg than voted during the last contest in March 2006, when the party chose Sir Menzies Campbell.
Achieving a united party will not be an easy task, especially after a fiercely fought leadership battle, in which members of Huhne’s campaign team came up with the ‘Calamity Clegg’ tag. The tiny margin of Clegg’s victory over Huhne will also make it more difficult for him to claim that he has a clear mandate from the Liberal Democrat membership.
Nevertheless, the fact that in the week of Clegg’s election, Gordon Brown and David Cameron have written letters to the Liberal Democrats suggests that they are both worried about the so-called ‘Clegg effect’.
Labour strategists fear that because Clegg represents a northern English constituency (Sheffield Hallam), he might succeed in spreading that electoral success to other northern cities such as Newcastle and Liverpool.
But for the immediate time being, the ‘Clegg effect’ is likely to pose more of a threat to the Conservatives. It was no accident that last Sunday, David Cameron offered to forge a ‘progressive alliance’ with the Liberal Democrats. Unsurprisingly, the overture was firmly rejected, but it shows that Cameron is nervous about Clegg’s possible impact on the political landscape.
There are two possible scenarios: either Clegg will succeed in exposing Cameron as a fake liberal Conservative, or he will merely come across as a pale imitation of the real thing – as ‘Cameron-lite’. The close physical resemblance between Clegg and Cameron won’t help Clegg to differentiate himself from the Tory leader.
Still, Clegg certainly looks the part. The son of a banker, educated at Westminster School and Cambridge, he appears to have some youthful appeal. But Clegg’s inexperience leaves him highly vulnerable. For the leader of a third party, having a good performer is a huge part of the job because, as far as most of the media is concerned, the Liberal Democrat leader is the entire party.
If Clegg’s nervous acceptance speech is anything to go by, then the party might just be wishing that they had stuck with Acting Leader, Vince Cable, who has been one of the surprise packages of 2007.