Nicholas Cecil and Miranda Bryant
Nick Clegg urged voters today to take a “leap of faith” as polls suggested support for the Liberal Democrats is on the wane.
Speaking to the Evening Standard's election panel, the party leader, who has only been an MP since 2005, admitted “experience” was an issue in the campaign.
But he attempted to blame the Iraq war, the recession, the expenses scandal, bankers' bonuses and the “destruction” of civil liberties on both Labour and the Conservatives. “That's not the kind of experience that I would be proud of,” he said.
Mr Clegg highlighted his experience as a European negotiator with China and Russia, Treasury spokesman Vince Cable's previous job as chief economist for Shell, and home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne's City career.
“Does that mean we are necessarily better than the other lot in terms of experience?” he said. “In a sense that is the leap of faith that I'm asking people to make”.
However, three polls today showed Lib-Dem support falling. The most dramatic, a Populus survey in the Times, had them down three points to 28, with the Tories up four on 36 and Labour down one on 27.
This would still leave the Conservatives short of an overall majority, but this morning Mr Clegg was still saying he wants to be Prime Minister.
The apparent drop in support — which could be put down to the margin of error in the polls — comes after Mr Clegg changed his position on who he would work with in a hung Parliament.
At the weekend he had said he did not believe the next prime minister could be from Labour if the party came third. But he then changed the message, arguing that Gordon Brown should not remain in No 10 in this scenario.
Mr Clegg faced his toughest questioning from the panel on this issue. Refusing to be pinned down, he said: “It's not a game of Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Mo between Nick, Gordon and Dave. It's a much more fundamental question about the kind of change that you want to see”.
Asked whether the election could be decided tomorrow in the third leaders' TV debate in Birmingham, which is expected to be watched by millions on the BBC, Mr Clegg said: “It depends what happens on the night”.
He swayed two Labour voters on the panel and one Conservative into considering supporting his party.
Targeting the student vote, he claimed tuition fees could rise to as much as £7,000 a year under the Tories or Labour.
A student in London could be left more than £44,000 in debt from fees and maintenance loans after a three-year course ending in 2015, the Lib-Dems say. Mr Clegg is pledging to oppose any attempt to remove the cap on tuition fees.
London Evening Standard
