Nick Clegg is rejecting liberalism just as the Conservatives are embracing it This creeping statism can be explained by the Lib Dems" main preoccupation: survival. At the start of the Coalition, Mr Clegg knew he'd lost the Left-wing half of his old supporters but wanted to try to rebuild his party as authentic liberals. This plan had much logic: since the collapse of the old Liberal Party half a century ago, people who believe in small government have been politically homeless - and Nick Clegg thought he had five years to resurrect the old religion. It failed. The Lib Dems" poll rating has now fallen even lower; their leader is in a panic, so is trying to win back those Left-wing votes. The Conservatives, meanwhile, seem to be attracting liberals from all parties: that is to say, people who believe in the market rather than the state. The most important signing came yesterday when Simon Stevens, a former Blair aide, agreed to be chief executive of the NHS in England. It is an inspired appointment, one of the best of David Cameron's premiership. Stevens is a classical liberal, who believes that competition between hospitals serves the public best. He rejects the Old Labour idea that hospital quality is defined by spending: the finest American hospitals, he says, can cost 20 per cent below the national average. And he should know. Stevens joins from UnitedHealth Group, one of the world's largest health-care providers, and has plied his trade in Britain, Africa, Latin America and the United States. He also co-authored Tony Blair's NHS reforms, which marked perhaps the high point of liberalism in the last Labour government. Mr Cameron says, privately, that he has no stomach for another political battle over health. But now, he no longer needs to fight: he has just hired a professional NHS warrior, the very best on the market who - if he's smart - will carry out his reforms in a way politicians like Nick Clegg will not notice. Time was when the Liberal leader would have celebrated all this. "We do want to break up the NHS," he said before the last election. At the time, he meant it: his lieutenant, Mr Laws, had written a fairly detailed proposal for doing just that. But in office, the Lib Dems have watered down the Coalition's health reforms, keeping more power in the hands of the state. It is as if Mr Clegg is suffering altitude sickness from his three years of government, tiring of the need to defend difficult measures. It is far easier for him to pose as a saboteur, using his position to thwart the ambitions of those ministers who do have firm beliefs and a discernible agenda. The centrepiece of yesterday's speech was a fatuous idea to convene a hit squad of good teachers who would lay down the law to bad ones. The Deputy Prime Minister called it a "Champions League," a cringeworthy analogy. The first draft of his address referred to an "A-Team Crack Squad," which made teachers sound like rejects from an Eighties TV drama. The second proposed to call them "Rescue Heads": that was abandoned when an official discovered the existence of a song called "Super Duper Rescue Heads." This is the nonsense that happens when a party abandons political principles. It is left with nothing but gimmicks. Mr Clegg's speech embodies precisely the type of headline-grabbing political opportunism that schools need to be protected from. And yet he is renouncing liberalism just at the time when it is becoming popular again. Polls show rising frustration with the cost and effects of the welfare state, and that younger voters tend to see government as a menace. Had the Blair project managed to regenerate itself, the Labour Party could be seeking their votes now, mocking the Coalition for stealing their best ideas, such as the academies programme and welfare-to-work reforms. Now, the Old Labour Party denounces such reforms and wants to give socialism another try. David Cameron is too much of a gentleman to point out his deputy's strategic blunder. But all this serves him well: a new generation of voters is associating liberalism with conservatism. Labour has a seven-point lead in the polls, but this drops to one point among the under-25s. Mr Miliband and Mr Clegg are both offering the ideas of the past, and plan to fill their manifestos with ways in which they'd claim more power for the state. The Conservatives can promise to protect liberty: through a Bill of Rights, an EU referendum, greater choice over schools and hospitals and - the greatest liberty of all - lower taxes. It's an offer no self-respecting liberal should be able to resist.