Imagine its three weeks before the November US midterms. Allahpundit at Hot Air has just done his usual business with the crosstabs and percentages from the latest generic congressional polls. He has posed his familiar exit question, posted the piece and then left the keyboard to feed his cats. As he looks out over Central Park all is right with the world of punditry as Republicans and Democrats spar with each other from sea to shining sea.

His cellphone rings – it’s Ed

“Allah – Salem has pulled your post..some new polls have just come in and you’re out of date”

“WTF” says Allah “has one of the parties surged?”

“Yes” replies Ed “but be prepared for a shock. IT’S THE WHIGS!!!!”

A fantasy – isn’t it? But not here in the UK where a shock wave has hit us with just two weeks to go before polling day. Several surveys now show that the party leading the field is one which last formed a government in 1910.

That’s right – for the first time in a hundred years the Liberal Democrats (aka The Liberal Party) now appear to be on course for an astonishing political upset.

The Conservative in me is bleeding. After thirteen wilderness years of having to watch as Blair and Brown and their Labour henchmen chipped away at Thatcher’s legacy I was confidently anticipating a Tory government which would roll back the centralising tentacles of the Westminster octopus. Cameron. of course, is no Thatcher and I have not agreed with everything he has done. But he has united his party after years of factional infighting following Maggie’s political assassination of and offered, a t last, a believable alternative to Labour’s innate assumption that Westminster knows best.

But I have to confess that the political junkie in me is pumping with adrenalin because the Liberal surge has put all the political pundits totally out of joint. Nobody predicted this and they have been slaughtering chickens to check out their livers as well has throwing their rune stones across the floor and they still don’t know what is going to happen come election day – it’s really cut these pontificating panjandrums of political prognostication down to size and might make their editors wonder if their one pound a word plus unlimited expenses price tag can really be described as giving value for money.

Up to last Thursday it was business as usual. The Tories were still ahead but slightly better economic news was putting a little bit more gilt on Gordon Brown’s Labour gingerbread and the Con/Lab gap was narrowing with Nick Clegg’s Liberals hovering, as usual, in third place around the 20% mark.

Then came the TV debate between the party leaders – a novelty for us but a familiar part of the US political scene for fifty years or so. Cameron and Brown concentrated on scoring points against each other but in what they perceived as a dignified “Presidential” way and the result was that neither of them particularly impressed. That gave Clegg the chance to come up from the inside and pose as the anti-politician, a straightforward kind of guy totally divorced from the punch and Judy politics of the two main parties – and he seized the moment. He came across as Mr Reasonable, the next door neighbour who would act the David on your behalf against the two political Goliaths – and it worked to perfection.

By the next day the media, which for years has been studiously ignoring Mr Clegg, had finally found a narrative in an election campaign that up to then had been fizzling like a damp firework. Cleggmania was born and suddenly being a Liberal Democrat was so…..NOW…..

However, while this Tory still bleeds at the prospect of a soft left bunch of “caring”, vacuous charlatans coming within an inch of the reins of power, my injuries are not yet life threatening and I remain optimistic – so do watch this space as I smuggle more messages from the bunker…..