To adapt Vince Cable's celebrated quip about Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg seems to have been transformed by the British press, in the space of just one week, from Churchill to Nazi. If you believed everything in the Tory papers you would have to conclude that the leader of Britain's centre party is a cross between Bernie Madoff and Josef Goebbels.
Even if you think the Cleggmania is overdone, and that he's not the Messiah, he's just a very naughty boy, and that his star will fall, this press criticism is looking plain silly: they've overdone it, frankly, and there may even be a bit of a backlash and some sympathy for Clegg, who looks like the victim of a media mugging. Lest we forget, this is simply what the Tories and their press allies have always gone in for when they've found themselves in a tight spot – personal assassination. It worked with Neil Kinnock and Michael Foot. This time, I suspect, it won't do them any good. Clegg's cleverer, a better politician, and has saner policies to sell than Labour did in the 1980s and early 1990s. He'll survive.
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