NICK CLEGG

Nick Clegg is fast emerging as the key person in the British general election to be held on 6 May. Mr. Clegg is the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the perennial third party in the U.K.'s two-party system. In the nineteenth century, it was the Liberals who traded blows with the Conservatives. But with the rise of organised labour and the gradual extension of the vote to all adults, the Liberals were eclipsed by the Labour Party early in the last century. And there they have remained, despite merging with the Social Democrats, who dropped off the right-wing of the Labour Party following its disastrous 1979 defeat by Mrs Thatcher and subsequent lurch to the left. Since the Second World War, the third party has managed to influence Government only once, following the 1974 election, which gave neither major party a majority.

Under Britain's "first-past-the-post" system, in which the candidate polling the most votes in the constituency wins that constituency, it is fiendishly difficult for third parties to make a breakthrough. This year, however, it does genuinely seem as if it could be possible, for two reasons. The first is that the economic - and particularly fiscal - problems that will be faced by the incoming Government are so large that British voters appear willing to ditch their usual desire for a strong mandate in favour of the sort of broad, cross-party consensus that a hung Parliament would bring. After all, there is no point in giving one party a strong mandate, if they simply proceed dogmatically to make things worse. And during the financial crisis, the politician consistently making the most sensible noises on economic matters has been the Liberal Democrats' Vince Cable. Voters appear to have noticed.

The second is Mr. Clegg himself. Squeezed by the two-party system into scrabbling for media attention (unlike the Conservatives' David Cameron, he doesn't sit directly opposite the Government benches in the House of Commons, but halfway down the aisle), he was given the opportunity to shine by the first ever Prime Ministerial debate on television last Friday. And boy, did he take it. Exit polls showed that he was by some way the most impressive of the three candidates. Young and personable, he made a sharp contrast to Gordon Brown's rumpled world-weariness. Yes, David Cameron is also young and personable. Yet he also represents a party that is far from young, and which includes key figures that are a long way from personable. It is also much more difficult for him to say with conviction that his party represents "change" if that party has been in Government more times than any other political party in the world, ever.

The best evidence that the Liberal Democrats are having an effect is that the two major parties are already saying that a vote for Clegg is a vote for the other lot. Nick Clegg still has to steer through the dangerous shoals of the two remaining T.V. debates. But if he holds his nerve, then he might just end up as the kingmaker on 6 May.

Walter Blotscher