Less than a day into the job, Nick Clegg is doubtless receiving plenty of advice, but he's unlikely to receive much better than this from James Graham:

In particular, Clegg needs to hit the road, catch a dose of initiativitis and take steps to ensure that even if the national media choose to ignore what he has to say, he is using every tool at his disposal to ensure that it comes across anyway.

But, as if to underline the scale of the challenge, the comments in reply to the post show that Nick is going to have to overcome considerable scepticism, even cynicism:

So out of the two white, westminster public school educated, right wing candidates, it was bosses' man, pro-privatisation, anti-union Clegg that won. At least big business and the rich will be happy and feel safe. - Nihon

Who knows, with a hung parliament they could swing the vote one way or the other and make a real difference. But if they are NL in pale orange ties, who's going to bother voting for them? - WillDuff

Now we have right wing Tory, centre-right Lib Dem and NuLab, and half the country are disenfranchised. This is a bad day for representative democracy for vast swathes of the population are unrepresented. I don't know where to turn. - Howie

Now, as a Lib Dem I obviously disagree with the sentiment of these commenters - that there's nothing much different between the Liberal Democrats, Labour and the Conservatives. But this is a truism; if I did believe that, I wouldn't be posting here. The interesting question is "why do other people believe it?".

Some people probably just are cynics. They're happiest lambasting all sides and no amount of persuasion is going to make a difference. But the majority of people are not like that, and therefore we must accept that their view of the Lib Dems as "just another political party" is genuinely held. Nick Clegg's challenge is to overcome this.

What I'd like to see from Nick is some of the radicalism that was talked about during the leadership campaign. Nick can learn from Chris Huhne's boldness, and if he can ally that with his natural instinct for framing issues in human terms, he will be in possession of genuine political dynamite. And nothing less than dynamite will unseat the two-party consensus that dominates Britain today. I can only speak for myself, but I think that the core message of liberty is a powerful one and a radical one in today's political environment. If Nick can make people see how this will affect them, he can win new converts to the party and its cause. Can we explain to people that liberty isn't just an abstract idea, but something that will give them new power in their own lives?

Above all, Nick needs to demonstrate that there is something real behind all of this. We already have genuinely radical policies which the other parties would never emulate, but we need to make people believe it, in their guts as much as their heads. And, perhaps, we might need more such policies. I hate to talk about policy so much, simply because 'policy' bores most people, even the politically aware. But policies are nothing other than principles given expression, and people can only make sense of our message when our policies and principles are aligned. Perhaps we have to be bolder in all areas if we are to make this connection clear.

One of the most frustrating things about reading criticism of the Lib Dems for being too timid or too similar to the other parties is that I know how many people in the party are here precisely because it's the only place that will give them the space to explore radical ideas. The intellectual life of the party remains vibrant; bloggers like Joe Otten and Jock Coats have been exploring the policies and principles of the liberal tradition for a long time now. Yet on forums like Comment is Free, people still regularly accuse the Lib Dems of lacking vision, radicalism and distinctiveness.

Nick Clegg isn't going to find it easy. There are plenty of people who don't want to give him a fair hearing. He needs to deliver the goods, in presentation, policy and principles. Anything less than this will be a failure. But he's got a chance, and, despite the narrowness of the result, he has a party behind him which believes in those principles and is impatient to see them play a larger role in British political life. It's a chance, and he's got the best opportunity to take it that any liberal leader has had for 80 years.

I like a speech with a new idea or two in it. They are rare beasts, and I don't expect such a treat even when the politicians I most admire speak. Nick Clegg inched in that direction on Wednesday.

His theme was the corrosive impact of (Labour's) politics of fear on the prospects for a progressive politics in the UK. Clegg suggested that

it is a doomed strategy, and will prove especially fatal to what is left of the progressive promise of New Labour. The politics of fear will drive Governments in an ever more regressive, illiberal direction exactly at a time when progressive parties need to think beyond the paradigm of the traditional “big state”.

I agree with this, but don't think it counts as new thinking. Indeed it is familiar rhetoric. Few people follow through and puts some flesh on the idea. Clegg doesn't either, but he does say (and I am compressing the quote enormously)

Liberals...believe radical decentralization is indispensable to the creation of empowered citizens, to the dispersal and accountability of political power itself.

Yet there remains a challenge for Liberals to define devolution in a way which is politically compelling.

This at least faces up to the problem that it is not enough to make speeches about localism, nor indeed to make proposals for localism: it needs to respond to the issues about which people feel strongly. This might just be an impossible constraint (although I hope it isn't).

I think the implicit argument here is that decentralisation does not simply mean a bigger role for local government.

The most interesting passage - and again I don't think it tremendously original in itself - is this

disengagement from the political process does not equate to an indifference to political issues: the environment, the Iraq war, international development, animal testing and many other emotive issues now engage people from a range of backgrounds, and ages, in unprecedented numbers.

I do not intend to rehearse here the point made by many others – most forcefully by the Power Inquiry earlier this year – that political parties need to change, or die.

In the Liberal Democrats, the emphasis on improving and updating how our party works has been a theme which our leader, Ming Campbell, has rightly championed from the moment he was elected as leader.

How we formulate policy, how we bring people into the party, how we nurture greater diversity in our candidates, the methods we use to communicate with the electorate, the techniques we use to campaign at election time.

All must be strengthened and revamped if we are to thrive in an age where party political allegiances are looser and more fickle.

The inevitable tension which exists between the preferences and prejudices of party members – of all parties – and the growing pressure for politicians to reach out to the vast bulk of the electorate who do not identify consistently with any single party will, I think, increase rather than decrease.

Political parties which speak only to themselves will be given short shrift by an impatient, sceptical electorate intolerant of party political niceties.

It is anathema to many Liberal Democrats to say that we should question our policy heritage. But if we don't we certainly risk the fate of 'speaking only to ourselves'. So I hope Clegg will put this speech into practice.