In power – now Nick Clegg sets out to impress

It’s 29 years this month since David Steel told the Liberal Party to head home and prepare for government. And they say a week is a long time in politics.

Clearly for party whose motto has always been less haste, more speed David was giving them lots of time to pack their bags. Well, having finally got round to it, they turned up as this weekend in Liverpool which for many will be the closest they ever get to the corridors of power, but not for all.

Just a year ago Nick Clegg caused not a little mirth among the handful of reporters sufficiently in trouble with their offices to be sent to the Lib Dems with a whimsical speech which included: “Let me tell you why I want to be Prime Minister.”

They smiled as he fantasised about a government with Vince Cable in charge of the treasury and promised “real change” rather than the fake version pledged by dreadful Dave of the Tories.

But of course that was before they secured promotion to the political premier league or, in Nick’s case, the political deputy premier league.

“People have got used to us being outsiders, against every government that comes along. Maybe we got used to it ourselves,” he told the not quite so faithful yesterday.

But it was clear that outside is a place Nick plans to spend as little time as possible visiting. As the leader who managed to reduce his parliamentary party by six seats in the General election and yet still trouser £134,000 a year as the price of failure Nick was on a roll. “The years ahead will not be easy”, he said without making it too clear who they would not be easy for.

That job is being left to Danny Alexander another Lib Dem who just a year ago could have retired to Barbados on the odds given against him being chief secretary to the treasury this week.

Indeed he has the rare distinction of also having been secretary of state for Scotland in the last three months.

You wonder just what he did wrong to get both these plums. Danny was fall guy again at the weekend trying to take the heat off those accused of taking the Tory shilling by pledging to crack down on tax cheats.

Dodging your taxes was as bad as cheating on benefits, he declared, even further alienating the Daily Mail wing of the Conservative Party apoplectic since May at the association with the sandal wearers. But then clearly Danny has no future.

Off to New York

But it was time for the main act the first leader of the Liberals in 65 years to arrive at the party conference in a chauffeur-driven government car.

In the audience, all those who would have been Nick, Paddy, Menzies even Vince. The lights went out and up came the pictures of the Great Leader on the doorstep, standing in for Dave at PM’s questions, standing in for himself at Deputy PM’s questions.

The Lib Dems are somewhat out of practice at adulation and Nick loomed into view out if the shadows almost as soon as his name was mentioned.

Announcing the Leader of the party and the deputy prime minister in the same sentence had some long serving delegates clearly waiting for two people to turn up. But no it was just him and his fans and a standing ovation perhaps for having the nerve to come out on his own.

He quickly reminded delegates that while they are discussing the future of party and nation he’s off to the UN in New York standing in for Dave.

His kids, he said, don’t understand that being deputy PM is more important than being leader of the Lib Dems, luckily everyone else does.

“David Cameron showed he could think beyond his party,” said Nick clearly thinking beyond his own. They weren’t too sure when he started but soon warmed to his theme as he reinforced the charge that the fault lay with Labour.

“We will have wiped the slate clean by the next general election,” he said laying out in one phrase the whole raison d’être of the coalition.

‘Stick by us’

But walking the tightrope between the party you lead, and the one which gave you your new job was never going to be easy. All he could do was rubbish Labour because for the first time in seven decades the Tories were off limits.

Imagine being on the doorstep in the future bragging about what the Government had achieved he said without giving any clues on whom they be on the doorstep against. “Stick with us” and by 2015 Britain will be better, safer and richer is what he said.

It will be an election year, is what he didn’t say and he didn’t say no more deals with the Tories.

And so there we had it, David Steel had finally got it right. By this time next week Labour will have its own new leader although in the best traditions it is likely to be the one they least don’t want rather than the one they do.

We do know it will be one of the Milibands and we do know that Ed of that ilk has said he won’t have anything to do with Nick.

That won’t keep the deputy prime minister awake is his New York bed but what should do is the fact that from now on he can’t blame anyone else.

As another teenage prodigy Peter Parker memorably said in Spider Man; “with great power comes great responsibility”.

Peter McHugh is the former director of programmes at GMTV, and was this year awarded the Royal Television Society Lifetime Achievement Award.