Nick Clegg -- Next British PM? -- Infuses U.K. Election With Personality

A funny thing happened on the way to the 2010 general elections in the United Kingdom: Personality began to matter. And the reason can be summed up in two words -- Nick Clegg -- leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats Party.

Never heard of Nick Clegg? You're in good company. Neither had half of Great Britain before last week. That's when Clegg electrified a heretofore moribund campaign season with his dazzling performance in the first-ever televised debates between the three candidates for prime minister. Overnight, Clegg went from the guy that the other parties walked out on when he spoke at the weekly Prime Ministers Questions to the "it" person in British politics.

And popular he is. A poll over the weekend had the Lib Dems in the lead with 33 percent of the vote, followed closely by the opposition Conservative Party with 32 percent and the incumbent Labour Party lagging behind with only 26 percent. Other polls show similar results. What's astonishing is that less than a week ago the Lib Dems were polling at somewhere around 20 percent.

On top of that, Clegg is now being likened to Winston Churchill, with a whopping 72 percent approval rating (compared with the Conservative Party's David Cameron with 19 percent and Labour's Gordon Brown with 18 percent. Ouch.)

In a sign of just how real his candidacy has become, Labour is actively courting the Liberal Democrats for a possible future coalition government, while the Tories are busy tearing him down. Given the realities of the British electoral system, a hung Parliament seems every more likely.

So . . . how did Clegg do this? Above all, the Lib Dem surge appears to have resulted from his personality and style in last week's debate, where he actively positioned himself as a plainspoken outsider and the real candidate of change (a mantle previously claimed by Cameron).

Throughout the debate, Clegg repeatedly made comments along the lines of "those two sound just like each other" when referring to his opponents. He also credibly made the case that, unlike Labour and the Conservative parties -- which have dominated British politics for much of the last century -- the Liberal Democrats have been on the outside. And that resonated with voters disillusioned with politicians and weary of politics as usual, particularly after the devastating parliamentary expenses scandal last summer.

For an American voter, the whole "outsider" discourse is familiar, of course. In the past two years alone, we've had Sarah "Going Rogue" Palin, who put Wasilla, Alaska, on the map. We've also had the onetime "maverick" John McCain. And then, of course, there's our very own president, who won the nation over with his "Change We Can Believe In" mantra.

But as I pointed out in an earlier article on the British debates, politics works differently over here. This is a parliamentary political system. So when you vote in a general election, you're not really voting for the prime minister per se, but for a political party (with a local member of Parliament -- MP -- as your representative of that party's platform). Stated somewhat more baldly: The messenger doesn't matter as much as the message.

Or so went the conventional wisdom . . . until now. With Clegg's newfound popularity, everyone's had to rethink the role that personality plays in electoral politics in Great Britain.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that the Liberal Democrats don't have any new ideas. Two of their more novel proposals include exempting anyone who makes less than 10,000 pounds (roughly $15,000) from paying income tax, as well as calling for the Trident missile nuclear weapons program to be scrapped.

But what's really striking -- to an American eye, anyway -- is just how much Clegg's personality seems to be dictating his appeal. A Populus poll for The London Times shows that the number of voters regarding him as likable soared from 52 percent before the debate to 81 percent afterward. (Cameron's rating fell to 43 percent from 53 percent.) Clegg is also seen overwhelmingly as the most honest party leader. While 53 percent of those polled think Cameron is honest about his policies and 51 percent think the same about Brown, 74 percent say so of Clegg. Young voters, in particular, seem to be responding to his fresh approach and message.

Of course, anything can happen in the next two weeks and it's still "early days" (as we say over here) as to how all of this will play out. But there's no doubt that Clegg's candidacy has given this election season a much needed jolt of adrenaline and given all of us a reason to really pay attention to the next two debates between the party leaders.

Next up? Foreign policy, which is Thursday's topic.

I can't wait.

Follow Delia on Twitter.