The Dubya dividend

So, it's four more years of George Dubya Bush. Such is the controversy surrounding the man that even Lib Dem prospective parliamentary candidates (PPCs) are finding their campaign plans for next year's general election affected by the result of last week's surprise Bush landslide.

John Neal, for instance, the Lib Dems' PPC in Haltemprice and Howden, has more reasons than most to rue the re-election of George Dubya Bush as US president: last year a US military training aircraft dropped a bomb - which, thankfully, did not explode - on his prospective constituency.

Quick to defend his prospective constituents, John fired off a letter to George Bush demanding an explanation and apology. He is still waiting patiently for a reply. "I am sure," John sighs, "this wouldn't have happened if Kerry was president."

Well, perhaps. I imagine there are a lot of folk who think many bad things would not happen had John Kerry won. But he didn't, and we are stuck with the bizarre moral certainties of a Bush administration for another four years. We had better get used to it.

Then again, there are always silver linings. David Walter, the Lib Dem PPC in Torridge and West Devon, illustrated the point to me the other day. He had been out campaigning in a local by-election in a ward in the wonderfully named town of Westward Ho! (the only place name in Britain, David explained, to include an exclamation mark).

He was chatting to a true-blue lady of Westward Ho! who had always voted for the Conservatives. She was so appalled by the Iraq war and by the Conservatives' support for the conflict that she was considering voting for the Lib Dems for the first time. In the event, the Lib Dem vote in the by-election was greater than those of the Conservatives and the UK Independence party put together.

As David wisely observed: "It is, of course mixed, news for the country and the world that Bush is back in the White House - but it means we can continue to make our political point about the war as forcefully as before."

Last weekend the Lib Dem Yorkshire and Humber autumn regional conference was held in my patch, in Sheffield Hallam. (Bizarrely, in an act of comical political desperation, the local Conservatives kicked up a fuss about the posters we had used to direct attendees to the event.)

There was much discussion about the impact of George Bush's election. We all agreed, general disapproval of Bush notwithstanding, that there might be some campaign lessons to be learned from the devastatingly effective Republican campaign machine. Karl Rove, Bush's all-powerful campaign supremo, is now widely regarded as possessing something close to magical campaign prowess.

Not to be outdone, I pointed out that in Lord Rennard, the Lib Dems' chief executive and campaign chief, we have our very own version of Karl Rove. The fact that Rove and Rennard both wear spectacles and appear happily well fed struck some of us as an eerie coincidence.

But maybe there are deeper lessons from George Bush's victory, too. It comes as little surprise that an atmosphere of fear about terrorism should have driven many bewildered voters into the arms of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld; more surprising to observers on this side of the Atlantic is the evidence that Bush successfully articulated the core "values" of the vast majority of America's heartland electorate.

It now appears that the coastal faces of the USA - notably California, New York and Boston, which are the most familiar windows on America for most British observers - provided a much distorted picture; inland a great conservative moral march was under way, and it took us all by surprise.

The reassertion of conservative moral and social values in American politics poses an important challenge to liberals everywhere. For sure, the UK is unlikely to experience the religious extremism and fervent small-town conservatism of America's political hinterland, but we should remain alive to the risk of a reassertion of illiberal values in British politics.

In some ways, it is already under way. The shameless erosion of cherished civil liberties by Blair and Blunkett in the name of the fight against terrorism is only the most obvious example. The pandering by both Labour and the Conservatives to an intolerant, xenophobic, Daily Mail-style response to asylum seekers is another, as is the narrow nationalism and patriotic prejudice that still disfigures so much of the debate on the European Union.

On all these touchstone issues, the Lib Dems seem to be alone in arguing for a progressive, tolerant, liberal vision of British society. George Bush has shown what happens if liberal values are not constantly nurtured and protected. Liberals everywhere must respond, and respond fast, if decent British political principles are to avoid a similar fate.

• Nick Clegg is the Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate for Sheffield Hallam and a former MEP