Election 2010: Clegg comes under attack from Tory press

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS leader Nick Clegg has come under fire from Tory-supporting newspapers in the run-up to the second leaders debate tonight on Sky at 8pm.

Mr Clegg's impressive performance in the first debate last week on ITV produced an unexpected shift change in the British political scene ahead of the general election on 6th May.

The Lib Dems, so long considered as the third-placed party, even took the lead in a couple of opinion polls conducted after the contest.

And, although the Conservatives still hold a narrow lead in most of the polls, none of them suggests David Cameron's party will win an overall majority.

The Tories are worried that, despite opposing a deeply unpopular government, the presence of Mr Clegg and a strong third party further reduces the chances of them getting that majority.

So it is no surprise to see attacks mauling the Lib Dem leader from the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail have been released on the day of the second debate.

The Telegraph accuses Mr Clegg of receiving payments from party donors into his personal bank account, a potentially damaging headline.

But Mr Clegg has denied any wrongdoing, saying that the money helped pay for a researcher. He says he had declared the donations to the parliamentary authorities and that he would publish the figures to prove it.

Meanwhile, the Mail laughably falls foul of Godwin's Law, an observation first made by Mike Godwin in 1990.

Godwin's Law states, "As an (online) discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

In their article, the Mail criticises Mr Clegg - in what they describe as a "Nazi slur" - for his suggestion back in 2002 that Britain holds "a misplaced sense of superiority" over Germany since World War II.

But, despite the Mail's insinuation, Mr Clegg holds a legitimate opinion which does not denigrate the magnificent achievement of the British forces in WW2. Those two views are not mutually exclusive.

The fact that the Mail seems to have trawled through every statement from Mr Clegg going back years shows how far the Tory press is willing to go in trying to discredit his campaign.

It also shows how concerned the Conservatives are - surely Mr Cameron should be racing ahead in the polls against a tired and unpopular government of 13 years?

The uncomfortable fact for the Tories is that their own popularity has never recovered by a large enough extent to make this election an easy win.

Of course, the mathematics are also against the Conservatives. Mr Cameron's party needs to win no fewer than 116 seats in addition to those which they already hold under the first past the post system.

But it is the same system which has provided the Conservatives - and Labour - with huge majorities in the past, and one which the Conservatives have no plans to change.

After 13 years in power with those big majorities, incumbent Gordon Brown has promised a referendum on voting reform in the Labour manifesto in a bid to woo the Lib Dems.

Mr Clegg has so far rejected any advances from Mr Brown, and he seems unlikely to prop up the ailing Labour administration, calling Mr Brown "a desperate politician".

But advisers claim the Labour leader is confident ahead of the second debate on foreign affairs as he believe it will allow him to expose both of his opponents' inexperience on the world stage.

The second half of the 90 minutes is an open forum and that could prove more troublesome for Mr Brown.

Continued high petrol prices contributed to inflation rising to 3.4% this week, while the latest unemployment data show a rise of 43,000 to 2.5million, 8% of the workforce.

Mr Brown will be consoled that figures from the British Crime Survey and police records show a 7% year-on-year fall in all crimes in 2009.

But those statistics will be of little comfort to shadow defence spokesman Liam Fox whose laptop and car were stolen after a burglary at his central London home.

It caps a bad couple of days on a personal level for the Conservatives, coming after Mr Cameron had an egg thrown at him by a student in a college in Cornwall.

Mr Cameron laughed off the incident with good grace but he must be left wondering why the country's clear desire for change has not yet decisively swung in his party's direction.