Not since Tony Blair ushered in the era of Cool Britannia more than a decade ago has a U.K. politician been imbued with the aura of celebrity that now attends Nick Clegg, the 43-year-old leader of the Liberal Democrats.
Clegg, a youthful-looking onetime university lecturer, was unknown to huge swaths of the country until the first leaders’ debate last week. His performance in that showdown with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Conservative Party challenger David Cameron transformed Clegg's status from that of an also-ran to "the British Obama." The British press has been filled with tales of “Cleggmania” and the coffers of his party have been swollen by a surge of new donations—fundamentally changing Britain’s political landscape.
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