It cannot be claimed that the Liberal Democrat leadership contest has seized the attention of the nation. Indeed, as some 10,000 votes fewer were cast in this ballot than when Sir Menzies Campbell was chosen less than two years ago, it does not seem to have truly stimulated the party itself. The character of the campaign and the smaller membership largely explain why Nick Clegg’s margin of victory was much narrower than at one stage seemed likely. While he tried to address an audience beyond the party faithful, Chris Huhne focused directly on the policy preferences of the most dedicated activists — notably over nuclear weapons and the public services — and sought to imply that the front-runner was a crypto-Thatcherite. Mr Clegg will simply be relieved that this election is over and he has won.

His slender majority will matter only if he lets it intimidate him. He should instead attempt to ensure that the first few months of his leadership are spent advocating themes that he would have preferred to place in the public domain over the past two months. He comes into his office barely known outside the political class, yet that can be an asset for him. His first task is to establish his own distinctive voice. He needs, in this respect, to ration his interventions. He should be true to his promise of delivering a “new kind of politics” by eschewing cheap partisanship and presenting original ideas. To be truly refreshing, he should be shamelessly candid about his own party’s failings as well as the flaws of the others.

Now that the Liberal Democrat primary is over, Mr Clegg should talk directly to the electorate. He must ignore Westminster tacticians and deliver his own agenda. A hung Parliament may be an outcome. It should not be a strategy.

Above all, he must offer a sense of what he means by the words “I am a liberal”. Virtually everyone in Britain is a liberal in some form or another. That of itself does not carry an obligation to back the Liberal Democrats on polling day. Mr Clegg made an interesting start yesterday by asserting that he wanted to frame “a liberal alternative to big government”. To his credit, many of his predecessors would have been reluctant to issue such a statement. For the Lib Dems to play any meaningful role in national politics, the party must once again seek to define British liberalism. It must reassert an enthusiasm for market economics that it pioneered in the 19th century. It should be far more suspicious of statism in public services, both at the central and local levels. It will have to retain a strong sense of morality about the conduct of public life and an unswerving passion for civil liberties. Likewise, Mr Clegg will be true to himself, his party and the idea of political choice in Britain by maintaining a deep commitment to internationalism.

All this may require painful political adjustments. Mr Clegg was attacked by Mr Huhne for allegedly favouring school “vouchers” weighted in favour of the poor. This is exactly the sort of initiative that a third party should be promoting, particularly when neither Labour nor the Conservatives are proving radical on health and education. The party should recognise that Iraq is disappearing as a controversy. At the same time, it would be most illiberal for it to oppose fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan. If Mr Clegg has the courage to say and do interesting things, he will find plenty of people prepared to listen.