“This is going to be Nick’s big media event of the day,” says a man called Keith to an assembled crowd – if you can call it that – of 30 Lib Dem supporters. “So as Nick is going to be standing here, I want you all standing behind him looking as enthusiastic as possible. Now don’t all hold up your diamond Lib Dem placards at the same time, otherwise you won’t be able. And that’s about it. Lots of Ra-Raing please.”
Just as Keith finishes his mini-pep briefing, another Lib Dem activist realises I’ve been accidentally been shepherded into the wrong place. “You should be in the press room,” he says firmly, leading me away.
Plucky is also in the wrong place at the wrong time. Plucky is the pet name for the Lib Dem battle bus, in deference to Nick Clegg’s repeated usage of the word “plucky” as a prefix for everything Lib Dem.
A week ago there was a battle-bus spin room, where a roundtable meetingdecided whether the Lib Dems should describe themselves as the “plucky anchor” of the coalition. Wisely, given the possibilities for malapropism, they decided against it.
Anyway, back to Plucky. Plucky had reckoned on leaving central London at 7.15am in the hope of arriving at the Ageas Rose Bowl – the home ground of Hampshire cricket club on the outskirts of Southampton – two hours later. Given the 20 miles of roadworks on the M3, and even allowing for the Lib Dems’ faith in the possibility of coalition bi-location, this was never going to happen. Which is why I had decided to leave London a good hour earlier.
The Lib Dem bus is on its way to Eastleigh, Chris Huhne's old seat, which the party kept in a 2013 by election. pic.twitter.com/jhMHuaKJlF
— Frances Perraudin (@fperraudin) April 27, 2015
Unnecessarily as it turned out. “Nick is running late,” Keith announced. “He’s got held up on the M3. So the rally is going to be at about 10 o’clock instead.” Ten minutes later than re-advertised, Nick duly arrived. Some of the 30 supporters who had been left shivering for an hour remembered to Ra-Ra.
“I’m here today to ask you all to vote for our candidate Mike Thornton who won so spectacularly here in February 2013.” That’s the closest Chris Huhne, who used to be the MP in Eastleigh, gets to a name check. “Mike confounded the pollsters then and he can win again. The Lib Dems and the Tories are in a neck and neck race here.
“We are also here because thanks to the Lib Dem council, we are building a hotel on this cricket ground.” One in which, it transpires, guests will be able to watch the cricket without having to get out of bed. That might even catch on. “We are here, too, because ... ” Well, it’s a nice enough location and he’s got to be somewhere. The speech itself is short and quite sweet, but nothing he hasn’t said anywhere else. What’s remarkable is the way he says it.
Nick Clegg and Eastleigh candidate Mike Thornton. The Lib Dems will fight 60 Eastleigh byelections, Clegg says. pic.twitter.com/prnlHlLzF3
— Frances Perraudin (@fperraudin) April 27, 2015
While David Cameron sounds more and more like John Major on acid – “I’m a passionate man, oh yes!” – and Ed Miliband’s new relaxed spontaneity looks suspiciously as if it was dreamed up by W1A’s fictional PR company Perfect Curve, Clegg looks more and more as if he is actually enjoying the campaign, as if meeting real – or almost real people – could be quite fun. It’s completely counter-intuitive. His support has fallen by two-thirds since the last election (a country could never sustain that kind of attritional casualty rate in wartime) and he is generally vilified by all sections of the media. A normal person would be booking himself into the Priory under such circumstances.
“How do you do it?” I ask. “Do you practise mindfulness?” Clegg gives a nervous laugh at this, so it might be that he does, before going into professional politician mode. “Anything’s better than sitting next to George Osborne in the House of Commons,” he says. You can’t argue with that, so I don’t. “And I love getting out and meeting people and I genuinely believe we are going to do far better than all the naysayers have been predicting ... ” And so on.
Nick Clegg and candidate Vikki Slade play with Playdough at a nursery in Mid Dorset and North Poole. https://t.co/649nbqLnav
— Frances Perraudin (@fperraudin) April 27, 2015
The reality may be different. Two things have changed the game for Clegg. The first is that the worst has already happened. He’s been rubbished by everyone for so long, he’s become used to it. No one can hurt him because he’s already accepted the end may be nigh. The second is the rather more subtle realisation that it doesn’t matter he has lost the trust of so many voters. The way the electoral maths stacks up he only needs Cameron and Miliband to trust him, and their benchmark is a great deal lower. As long as the Lib Dems win 30 seats, Clegg can still be a player in any future coalition – formal or informal.
Clegg wanders off to give some other interviews, while I wander down the steps to chat to Plucky’s driver. The fridge is out of stock of Diet Coke, but he happily goes round to the side of the coach to get me one out of the storage hold. That’s another base Nick has got covered. In the distance, I hear a smattering of applause and wonder if I’ve just missed something vital. It turns out to be the crowd of a couple of hundred spectators clapping the players on to the pitch for the second day of the county game between Hants and Notts.
Our new #T20Blast @CageCricket activators from @bartonpeveril meeting @nick_clegg today @TheAgeasBowl pic.twitter.com/LDwfjRzAxT
— HampshireCricket ITC (@HantsCricketITC) April 27, 2015
Time to leave. As I drive home, I listen to Clegg being interviewed by Jeremy Vine on Radio 2. “I didn’t join the coalition just to be called deputy prime minister,” he insists. “I would have been just as happy being called, um, er ... Mary-Jane.” It then occurred to me I might have overlooked a third possibility about why he was looking so chilled out.
