The Clegg surge has surprised everyone, not least Nifty Nick himself. But having the scent of power in his nostrils, it hasn’t taken long to inflate his head.

Last night senior Tories confirmed that the Lib Dems will now become the primary target for showing the public who and what Clegg and Cable are. One senior Tory insisting on this above all other equals is David Cameron himself…because it’s looking increasingly likely that Nick Clegg thinks he can become Prime Minister with Vince Cable as his Chancellor.

The thing about the LibDem leader is that he’s always emphatic about what he wants – but then gets his mind changed by spin doctors the following day. So this is Sunday and I can’t do a deal with a Party that comes third…then it’s Monday, and I’m reopening the door to such a deal, but not with Gordon Brown as prime minister. His aides denied that he had made a slip, insisting that he was giving “more definition”. Quite: on Sunday I was beginning to see the chance of becoming PM whatever happens – now I definitely want to be PM whatever happens.

Unfortunately, Nick’s hubris isn’t borne out by reality. The Conservatives are chary of a deal even containing PR as a half-promise; the chances of the Party’s Right wing dumping Cameron and Osborne for Clegg and Cable are zero. One or two senior LibDems are getting a tad concerned about their Leader’s growing ambition: they think the British won’t thank him for putting his career before the country. But on the whole, they now tend to accept that, while they’re likely to get a better deal out of Labour, Labour’s own abject failure could force them to turn to the Conservatives. One at least is actively encouraging Clegg to start publicly giving some Brownie points to those who want rid of Gordon….of whom there is no shortage.

I have to say I agree with that person. If I was Nick Clegg, I’d be giving Labour a leg up. And as Charles Kennedy has now closed Nick’s back door on the PR issue, if I was David Cameron I wouldn’t be having a go at Clegg at all: I’d be encouraging Labour voters to vote LibDem ‘because then you’ll at least be voting for a Party with which we’ll do business’. This seems to me obvious. Whoever is ‘guiding’ Tory strategy right now, he or she is being neither brave nor bright. Plus ca change.