Ming on the back foot

The YouGov poll in the Sunday Times has got the Lib Dem conference off on the wrong foot for Ming Campbell. The poll finds that only four percent of voters think that he is the most impressive of the three party leaders. Even among Lib Dem supporters, Gordon Brown outscores Campbell and 65 percent of Lib Dem voters think that they would be better off with a younger leader. While the party’s overall rating of 15 percent shows that it has lost a third of its support since the last election.

As Fraser writes in this week’s magazine, the conference has effectively turned into a venue for the two young pretenders, Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg, to showcase their talents: Huhne is doing 13 fringe events and Clegg eight.  There are already signs of tension between the two of them, with Clegg slapping down Huhne’s suggestion that the party lacks ambition on the Westminster Hour.