Exclusive - Nick Clegg lives!

I know what you were thinking when you saw Nick Clegg's name in the title of this post - isn't he dead? You could be forgiven for thinking so. For a leader of one of the big three political parties he seems to keep a very low profile - we see more of McCavity than Clegg. It was the same during the Lib Dem leadership race, Huhne was all over the media while Clegg skulked in the shadows. I was sure Huhne would win, I bet many Lib Dem members are now wishing he had.

Talking of Lib Dem leaders, Vince Cable has been reported as saying that the party was "not doing as well as we hoped we would be" in recent polls. However, with only two days until the local elections, Clegg has now stepped from the shadows to claim:

"I am in fact extremely pleased with where we are in the polls. "The polls yesterday we're at 20%, that's considerably higher than 13% just a few years ago. "It's far, far higher than we've ever been at this point in the political cycle two or three years after a general election."

The truth of course, is that with Labour dying a slow death, the LibDems should be doing much, much better. The Lib Dems third leader in two years has, to my recollection only surfaced once since his Lisbon Treaty abstention fiasco - and that was to tell us how many notches he has on his headboard. He's not had a very auspicious year so far has he? If I were a Lib Dem supporter (not in a million years) I would be a little worried to have a leader who keeps a low profile, only to pop up to make a show of himself and the party. However, I would be more worried by his lack of ambition. Apparently his overriding ambition is to double or more than double the number of Lib Dem seats over the next two elections. Wow, five (ish) years of his leadership and he strives to have less seats than the Tories have now.

When Nick Clegg eventually steps down, will the history books say: Nick set himself low standards - and failed to achieve them.