It would be nice to imagine that the Lib Dem surge is based on a careful, considered analysis of the platform they’re offering but even as I write that I find myself laughing at the notion. No chance.

I’m a reformed Cleggmaniac, someone who went through the process of falling in love with Nick Clegg many years ago when I rejoined the Lib Dems to vote and campaign for him as their leader. I saw him as the best hope of moving the party in a more economically liberal direction and recognised his skills as a communicator and all round handsome charmer. I was absolutely convinced that he could change the fortunes of the Lib Dems. As it happened he suffered the same problem all Lib Dem leaders do – no publicity at all outside elections – and I recall some people pointing out that despite my enthusiasm and certainty, despite Nick’s skills as a communicator, Nick had been… well… disappointing.

Between that happening and now my brain rebelled against the idea that the problem with the Lib Dems was the packaging, that if you could somehow find the right message and the right image that you could make great things happen. I began to concentrate on what was wrong with the Lib Dems underneath rather than playing the easy Turd Polishing game until eventually I left the party. Policy matters to me more than I thought.

But here we are, several years on, and suddenly that old promise for Nick Clegg seems to be turning into something real, and all I can think is how shallow and profoundly wrong it is that simply being a good communicator and telling the right story at the right time has actually worked. Are we really so pliable and easy to manipulate?

If true, the problem the Tories have more than anything else is the 4 years between Cameron becoming leader and now. They’ve not been kind to him – he’s chubbier, shinier, redder, wrinklier and with far less hair than the bright, passionate young thing that wowed people back in the day. If this really is just a beauty contest, if elections can be won or lost by the leader of a party giving the audience at home the full-on come to bed eyes treatment, Cameron may in fact be in deep trouble.

Cameron may prove the heir not to Blair, but the heir to Kinnock – someone who attempted to and understood the need for of reform his party but couldn’t seal the deal with the electorate (ironically because of taking victory for granted?). Whether this will force the Tories to reform even further, or simply find a more beautiful leader, it remains to be seen… but on the strength of this election I suspect the latter.