Just before the election I wondered if the whole campaign would come to seem like a dream, because after all the giddy excitement the polls seemed to be converging back to the point at which they started. By the time of the third debate you could sense some of the air going out of the Clegg bubble. Voters had started to feel slightly embarrassed at their sudden, tipsy crush on the new guy, and decided that they really ought to be more grown-up about this stuff. And in the end they returned, mildly depressed, to their regular partners Gordon and Dave, perhaps casting a rueful glance back at Nick as they did so. When the results came in it was clear that Cleggmania had evaporated into thin air. For the Lib Dems, who had come to hope for so much, the campaign must indeed have seemed like a dream, or a mirthless joke.
Of course, the Lib Dems are excited again now, and over something more substantial than opinion polls. But given the election result, is it true that the campaign and the debates and Cleggmania might as well not have happened? I don't think so.
Daniel Finkelstein has an interesting post up on the three external factors that make this coalition possible. He counts Obama's election to the presidency (making it easier for Lib Dems to line up behind an Atlanticist foreign policy); the ratification of Lisbon, thus avoiding a deal-breaking commitment on the Conservatives' part to a referendum on it; and the size of the deficit, which means there is all-party agreement on the need to reduce spending (forcing a convergence of fiscal politics).
I would add another, slightly softer and less fundamental, but interesting nonetheless: a popular and credible Liberal Democrat leader. The lasting value of Cleggmania is that it raised the profile of the Liberal Democrat leader to the extent that it became much easier for Cameron to invite him into government. Had the Lib Dem leader been anonymous after the election, or worse, actually unpopular, such a full-blooded partnership wouldn't have been possible. The debates - and Clegg's seizing of the moment - facilitated this coalition.
The voters have one of their regular partners in 10 Downing Street - and they get to have the new boy as a bit on the side. Perfect.
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