Can Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats be the UK's Obama

9.00.00am GMT Wed 11th Mar 2009

Nick Clegg

As much as I would like to say Yes We Can sadly I think it is not to be.

Much of my weekend at the Liberal Democrat Conference was attending of listening to sessions about Obama's victory, what the Liberal Democrats could learn and what we could do to emulate the victory. Much of which I had picked up by my time in the States campaigning for Obama but a fair amount was new.

Nick Clegg and other MPs have taken up the theme of change and Howard Dean came to Conference and gave a good speech, he told the Liberal Democrats that we could win. As I say I would love him to be right but can see a number of problems.

UK politics is different from US politics an agenda of change is easy to push where you are the only alternative but being the third party 'Change' doesn't work quite so well.

The message from Conference is we need to involve many more people and energise them to activism (there were also other key points about using the internet and fund-raising but it is the activism that I am struggling with) - the reason Obama could do this was his message and it is the reason the Liberal Democrats can't.

The Liberal Democrats do not have the message. It's not lack of policy - we have heaps of that (if anything too much policy is the problem) and most of it is fantastic and if we could implement it then the UK would be a much better place. The problem with the message is that we do not have a short understandable message.

Obama wanted to cut tax for 95% of people and only those earning over (if I recall correctly) $200,000 would pay more - simple and to the point and you can clearly see what group you fall into - honestly do you know if you would be better off under the Liberal Democrats? Actually our tax and spend policies are rather good but they take too much explaining.

If we get the message right - a punchy understandable message - remember the penny on income tax, the opposition to the Iraq War or making our tax proposals easy to understand then we can sell it get more supporters and activists, until then No We Can't!