In football many fans have wondered whether a manager should stay when the results aren’t going well for the team (because they’ve overseen good results in the past) or whether they should get a new manager and hope there’s a bounce in the club’s performance.

Liberal Democrats have been going through exactly the same dilemma, and some, including myself, thought a new manager was needed. But then comes yesterday’s speech – equivalent I would say to an unexpectedly good performance with a number of goals scored – and it makes you think that maybe the team were wise to stick by the current manager. It is noticable that Clegg has always had the backing of the ‘dressing room’ even when journalistic knives were out for him. And I know from speaking to someone who has heard him speak off camera that he is very personable, straight talking and down to earth – not the image the media portray him to be.

There the football analogies end, because unlike in the Premiership where managers can be dropped at any point in the season, in politics changing the manager at this point would be equivalent to a jockey deciding to switch horses before the last jump; by the time they’d got going again the race would be lost! In any case, one of the other horses stumbled at the last fence and the leading horse has forgotten the route! We’ve never been brilliant at first-passed-the-post in the political grand national, but stay the course and we might get a better result than the bookies expect!