Can Nick Clegg win hearts of Midlands voters?

The West Midlands is a political wasteland for the Liberal Democrats. Leader Nick Clegg talks to Sunita Patel about his ambitions for the region - and Britain.

Nick Clegg is a new kid on the block. This is his first Lib Dem autumn conference since he was elected party leader in December 2007, two months after the resignation of Sir Menzies Campbell.

And at 41, he is the youngest of the party leaders, beating Tory leader David Cameron by three months.

Following his election as MP for Sheffield Hallam in 2005, Mr Clegg was immediately promoted to the front bench as Europe spokesman and was later made home affairs spokesman - and tipped as a future leader almost from the moment he arrived in the Commons.

"This is an exciting time to be a Liberal Democrat," he says, in a foreward to the conference agenda.

"People are fed up with Labour and want something different - but they aren't taken in by David Cameron.

"It's our chance to be what they are looking for. We know that if we want Britain to be fairer, we are the only ones who will make it happen.

"Labour can't. And the Tories won't. We can and we will."

With Gordon Brown facing growing dissent not only from his Westminster brigade, but disillusioned and disgruntled Labour activists too - coupled with hard-up voters struggling to make ends meet and unable to see an end to the economic gloom - and the Tories steaming ahead in the polls, the political balance in the UK is such that the Lib Dems could hold the balance of power after the next General Election.

But while they have made significant in-roads in local and national elections in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield and Oxford, the West Midlands continues to evade them.

On the parliamentary estate, they have just three representatives from the region - Lorely Burt MP (Solihull), John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) and Paul Keetch (Hereford).

"I used to be a Midlands politician," responds Mr Clegg. "I used to represent the East Midlands in Europe, but I have some feel for the Midlands generally.

"I am very ambitious for our party there because I do acknowledge that we have done ok, but we could do so much better," he admits.

So how does he intend to win the hearts and minds of traditional Labour - and Tory - voters across the Black Country, Staffordshire and Shropshire?

"To show that at a time of looming economic recesssion and as people actually look to politicians for answers about how they can make ends meet - we have got those answers," he replies.

"On fuel poverty, for instance, the first thing I asked in Prime Minister's Questions in January is the last thing I asked in July - that fuel companies had to cough up more of the huge windfall subsidies.

"Look at housing. We have been saying give councils in the West Midlands the freedom to borrow on assets so that they can buy up unsold properties and so provide more social housing.

"And look at what we are now saying about taxes, which is that people at the top end who have done very well over the last 10 and 11 years, need to pay a bit more and the loopholes and the exemptions they enjoy, capital gains tax or pensions tax relief, you name it, need to be bended so that money can be re-targeted through tax breaks for people on low and middle incomes.

"I hope that kind of whole approach to making Britain fairer, giving people on low and middle incomes a real break will resonate with people who have obviously given up on Labour.

"Labour has failed them. I think David Cameron, George Osborne, they kind of seem to assume it is already in the bag. I speak to hundreds of people every week, and people aren't persuaded yet."

So should the party hold the balance of power in 2010, who would he rather work with - Gordon Brown or David Cameron?

"I am really not interested in staring into a crystal ball trying to guess what British voters are going to say, I just think that's wrong," he says. "I think my job at the moment is to be clear about what we stand for."

Not only is he uninterested in picking sides, but he confesses his relations with Messieurs Brown and Cameron amount to nothing more than a "hello" here and there - mirroring his current relationship with the British public.

His friends know his politics and ambitions, his public school and Cambridge education, that he speaks five languages, and that his showbiz chums include actress Kate Winslet's director husband Sam Mendes.

And while he cultivates an image as a clean-cut family man, one or two skeletons have emerged from his closet, including that of when as a 16-year-old exchange student in Munich, he and a friend were arrested for setting fire to a collection of rare cacti belonging to a professor - and the startling revelation that he has slept with "no more than 30" women, in a frank interview with GQ magazine.

But how well really does the ordinary punter know the Lib Dem leader?

"I have always been very relaxed about the idea that it will take me a while to introduce myself to the public. I hope that they'll see by the end of the conference that I am sincere about what I believe in and that I feel that we can make a huge difference to this country."

One Liberal Democrat, however, who no doubt is broadly recognised on the street, is MP Lembit Opik - albeit more so for his celebrity, than politics.

But despite his notoriety, Mr Opik, the Montgomeryshire MP and Lib Dem housing spokesman who recently split up with his fiancee, Cheeky Girl singer Gabriela Irimia, is still held in a high regard by Mr Clegg.

When asked if he considers Mr Opik an asset, or a liability, he replies: "An asset - of course he is. I think Lembit has got a warmth about him. He wears his heart on his sleeve. He is not a cardboard cut-out politician."

With regards to his own personal life, Mr Clegg earlier this month announced that he and his wife Miriam Gonzalez Durantez are expecting their third child in February.

"Miriam and I have always wanted more children. We have two adorable little boys, I am totally proud of them."