So the Tory Press has gone mental trying to break Nick Clegg today, and you can hardly blame them. What’s happening is a threat to the way those papers want things to work out – what’s at stake for them is access to the Government for scoops and exclusives and not having to change their editorial policy to pander to a new pro-Lib Dem readership. That’s the last thing they want. Alix Mortimer has a pretty good piece on this on what she believes to be the motives behind all this.

Truth is this barrage was always going to happen, and it happens to be happening today, as it happens. The journalists working on the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph are working around the clock to find something – anything – that’ll damage Clegg permanently… or, you know, just for a couple of weeks. That’s all that’s needed. That’s what a Free Press does. They’re supposed to do this, for better or worse. The only Nick Clegg that’s any use to anyone is one that can survive smears, innuendo and outright assaults from the British Press. If he can’t then any Government of his wouldn’t last 5 minutes and we all know it.

But while all this is going on, Labour’s campaign is, just for tonight Matthew, playing the role of the traditional Lib Dem campaign… you know, that ‘other’ party that’s also campaigning that no-one really cares about. The Mail and the Telegraph can’t even be arsed trying to smear Brown as he’s no longer any sort of threat to them. The ‘narrative’ of this election, that it’s a fight to the death between the Liberals and the Tories, has already claimed its first casualty in the cross-fire: The battle for Labour has become trying to get any kind of attention at all.

Even the Tories seem to be struggling to stamp their message on the day’s agenda. They surely can’t regard a Clegg story dominating the BBC News website as any kind of ‘success’ or helpful, surely?