Cameron is at a loss about what to do.

The Tory election campaign is being referred to as "the most inept in living memory" by some Tory supporters.

Cameron is now being accused of plagiarising some of Clegg's speeches.

Labour claimed that seven statements made by Mr Cameron in the TV broadcast had been plagiarised from Mr Clegg's speeches and broadcasts. They included saying that people were "desperate for change", that politicians should not just tell people "what they want to hear" and that the country needed "energy and optimism".

Lord Mandelson, who heads Labour's election strategy, said: "David Cameron has spent four years saying what he thinks people want to hear and now, when he believes people want to hear Nick Clegg, he starts imitating him. David Cameron has lost his real voice, assuming he had one in the first place."

A Tory spokesman said of Lord Mandelson's attack: "This is a bit rich coming from a man who speaks with a forked tongue every time he opens his mouth." However, one senior Tory party insider admitted they were finding it "very difficult" to mount a counter-attack on Mr Clegg. "There is a very difficult line to tread. Some people do want us to take a shot at Mr Clegg but we don't want to look as though we are just old-style politicians knocking bits off each other. You have to be more subtle than that," said a Tory source.

Lord Tebbit, the former party chairman, called on Mr Cameron to "puncture the Clegg bubble" before it was too late, saying the Tory leader had been "shy" about talking up his own proposals "for fear that it would frighten the electors". He urged Mr Cameron "not to hang around because there is a Clegg bubble and the imperative is to puncture the bubble before 6 May – the 7th would be too late."

I find the current Tory election plan hysterically funny. Cameron has spent years saying nothing, imagining that not being Gordon Brown is going to be enough to guarantee him victory. And then, during the first ever British TV debate between possible future leaders, Nick Clegg claimed the ground of game changer and branded both Brown and Cameron as the part of the old party system which is actually part of the problem rather than the solution.

Since then, Cameron simply doesn't know what to do. Lord Tebbit is insisting that Cameron tackle "the Clegg problem", but that would require him showing his hand, which Cameron is loathe to do.

We all know that Nick Clegg is not going to win the election, and the more attention Cameron pays to him the more he exacerbates the situation.

This problem simply wouldn't exist if Cameron had a set of policies which he was keen to sell to us. But Cameron is playing a game of smoke and mirrors, and Clegg has nicked in and claimed the mantle of change which Cameron was so keen to steal from Barack Obama.

Cameron now simply doesn't know what to do.

Does he elevate Clegg further by attacking him? Or does he simply continue to mouth the empty platitudes which have served him so well for so long, even though Clegg appears to have found a gap in his armour?

Mr Cameron insisted he would not change his strategy by stooping to "negative" campaigning and would not "lash out" at the Liberal Democrats. "I am going to redouble the positive, accentuate everything positive we want to do for our country," he said.

So, the plan so far is to continue to imitate Barack Obama, without understanding what it is exactly that Barack Obama does.

Barack Obama plays against the stereotype of the angry black man. He remains aloof, distant. This tends to enrage his opponents to such a degree that they eventually overplay their hand and self destruct.

Quite what this Caucasian Etonian aristocrat thinks he has in common with Obama's plan to counter the notion of an angry black man is utterly lost on me.

But he's imitating it anyway. This bugger really is clueless.

He would be much better off simply by telling us what it is exactly that he plans to do, but he appears at pains not to do that. Which leaves him at the mercy of people who are never going to win the election, like Nick Clegg.

I really never expected this campaign to be so amusing. But I am thoroughly enjoying it.

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Tags: Cameron, Brown, Clegg, UK election 2010, Obama