The Great Ape

David Mitchell writes:

Nick Clegg gets a lot of stick these days. I've certainly slagged him off several times and I feel guilty. It says a lot more about me than it does about him – I'm just cross with myself that I voted for his party. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't mind him at all. But when you vote Lib Dem, the last thing you expect is to end up complicit in what a government is doing. You expect to be merrily carping on the sidelines at the thoughtlessness of those corrupted by power. It's an almost monastic act, a renunciation of worldly power in the name of self-righteousness.

When you're trying to wash your hands of politics, it's disconcerting to discover you've just rinsed them in the blood of your countrymen, to have to explain yourself to Labour-voting friends: "I'm sorry, I got over-excited about electoral reform"; "I became intimidated by the size of Gordon Brown's head"; "It was annoying not to be able to feel smug about Iraq." You can't say: "Well, I never expected them to get into office – that was the key to their appeal." At worst, they were supposed to mitigate New Labour, not connive with the Tories.

If it's been a nasty shock for me, how much worse must it have been for Clegg? A member of the Lib Dems said to me in early 2010 that a hung parliament would be a disastrous election result for them. I didn't really understand. To me, it seemed like their best realistic outcome. Recently, I realised that we were both right. Clegg must have had a horrible time under a barrage of abuse and, earlier this year, it started to show. He began to look jowly and sad. One thought of him sitting through cabinet meetings, shaking his head and glumly eating crisps.

Well, there's only so much criticism a man can take before he's forced to react and it seems Clegg has finally snapped. But instead of resigning and returning to his manifesto pledges, he's just got himself a rowing machine. Obviously he didn't mind people calling him a hypocrite nearly as much as them saying he had a paunch. To be fair, he's only going along with our whole society's priorities there.

Apparently the machine, which was acquired a few months ago, allows Clegg to work out between, and sometimes even during, meetings. Presumably this way he can intimidate advisers with his physicality – panting and dripping with perspiration, he can draw them into his circle of trust, closer to the heart of power, like the noblemen privileged to witness Louis XIV's levee. Or indeed like Winston Churchill, who often conducted business from his bed or the bath, a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigar in the other. I can't really imagine Churchill heaving away at an exercise machine, though – getting out of breath while Halifax burbled on about appeasement. The blood, toil, tears and sweat he offered members of his government were largely metaphorical.

There'll be no victory cigar for Clegg because he's given up smoking. This is a shame as it was one of the few things I still liked about him. I'm not saying it's good to smoke, but it was an engaging reminder of his humanity, his frailty – it helped me believe that he was acting more out of weakness than malice. But an aide said last week that Clegg "hasn't needed gum or hypnosis or anything like that. Willpower alone has done the trick". A fine time suddenly to find some of that.

The main reason I'm disappointed by Clegg's health drive is that it means he'll stay looking exactly like all our other neat, slightly boyish politicians: Cameron, Osborne, several Milibands, Andy Burnham. Brown hair, black suit, white face, plausible smile – that's what you've got to look like, conventional wisdom tells us, if you aspire to the front rank of power. Forgettable, identical, cast in the image of Blair. Clegg's ageing and broadening features had begun to make him look like a recognisably different person – not quite as noticeable as Eric Pickles, but it was something. But now, with exercise and a diet, he's squeezing himself back into the mould.

Well, I think it's about time someone broke it. People are always claiming that a bald man can never be prime minister in the television age. But what about John Major? I know, technically, he had a full head of hair but, if they're saying that baldness makes you seem ineffectual, then Major was metaphorically worthy of a coot simile. He exuded the air of the loser, the underdog, the submissive, and yet no prime minister's government, in all of British history, has polled more votes than Major's did in 1992. Maybe it was because the country, after a decade's cruelty at the hands of a savage dominatrix, wanted to get fucked normally for a bit. But still it's a sign that our leaders don't necessarily all have to look the same.

Not many of our top politicians from any of the main parties would declare themselves fans of Blair, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It would have been difficult to believe postwar Germany's rejection of fascism if its leaders had taken to growing little moustaches. It's depressing that Blair's rise to power is the only sort our politicians have the imagination to believe possible. Surely the electorate must be sick of that style of politics?

In television, for all that people talk of creativity, the percentage game is in being deftly derivative. Don't have the big, risky, original idea, be the first to copy it. The steady money is in remakes, reworkings, shows you can signal to an audience as being similar to something they've enjoyed before. These programmes don't change the world, but they pay the rent.

It seems that politics is the same; everyone's still aping Blair. But the world is changing fast (just because people always say that doesn't mean it isn't currently true). Our next important leader is unlikely to obey the same rules as the last. Maybe the time has come for someone bald, or old, or obese, or disabled – or just less slick. It never looked likely that it would be Nick Clegg. Now he's dutifully pumping iron to make sure.