LIKE so many Shirley Valentines, bored by staid, unchanging, grumpy normality and bowled over by a sudden exposure to youth, sunshine and charm, the voters of Britain are conducting a holiday romance with Nick Clegg.
Clip on charmsIt may be fun. But can it last? Hardly anyone knew who Mr Clegg was before he shimmered on to our TV screens on Thursday night, hands nonchalantly in pockets and with his humanity beautifully rehearsed and turned up to maximum.
We knew the other two all too well. Gordon Brown's woebegone visage seems to have been sulking over our breakfast tables for decades, in one role or another.
Meanwhile, we have had almost five years to grow rather too accustomed to David Cameron's smooth face and even smoother manner. He was the future once, but is not as fresh as he once was.
Thanks to broadcasting's ruthless exclusion of third parties from the airwaves, Mr Clegg has been kept from us. So now we swoon when he turns out to be personable, articulate and well-briefed.
There is some justice in this. It is only fair that, in a time of fading tribal loyalties, the Liberal Democrats should at the very least be given a chance to tell us what they have to offer.
But we should read and listen carefully to what that is. Mr Clegg has the great good fortune to look (and dress) very wholesale sexy lingerie unlike the party he leads.
Behind him in the shadows stand dense ranks of beards and sandals, with beliefs so loopily Left-wing that even New Labour long ago abandoned or rejected them.
On national defence, on taxation of property, on green fanaticism, on the punishment of criminals, on immigration and above all on the European Union, the Liberal Democrats have policies which might have been designed to alarm and annoy the very parts of Middle England which they have suddenly reached.
And there is no doubt that a vote for Mr Clegg's party is likely to lead to a Lib-Lab pact of some kind, entrenching New Labour in Downing Street for years to come. If Britain votes on the lines of The Mail on Sunday's opinion poll, Labour would be the largest single party. If you vote orange, you will get Brown.
The holiday romance could end - as they so often do - in sadness, replica hublot watches disappointment and recrimination. Happily, there is still plenty of time to calm down, and for Mr Clegg to lose the allure of novelty.
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