So huge swaths of the electorate seem to have finally decided that peevish gump David Cameron isn't the convincing statesman they never quite thought he was in the first place. Still, he had a good innings. People often criticise Cameron's judgment, but no matter what you think of his policies, his ability to surround himself with decoy pillocks was a strategy that, until recently, paid dividends. Since coming to power in 2010, voters have been so busy hating Nick Clegg, Andrew Lansley, Liam Fox, George Osborne, Francis Maude and now Jeremy Hunt, there's been very little rage left over for Dave.

Getting round to properly abhorring him has seemed like too much bother, like an unwelcome, nagging chore. You see his face on the news and perform a 1,000-year-long internal sigh. Yes, yes. I'll detest you in a minute. I've got to finish detesting all these other people first.

But now his decoys are spent. Clegg, in particular, absorbed so much bile, he underwent a startling physical transformation: from buoyant Geoffrey-off-Rainbow type to watery-eyed totem of misery. It was as if he had somehow been bitten by a radioactive puddle. He's so depressing to look at, they really should erect some kind of protective awning whenever he's out in public, like they do around grisly human remains. Hating him isn't simply a cliche; it actually feels vaguely cruel. So he's no longer of much strategic use to Cameron.

Ditto Lansley, who provided months of angry distraction in the run up to the NHS reforms, but now seems like a villain from last year's movie. Attacking Osborne is far more fashionable. The trouble for Cameron is that he's fused with Osborne in the public brain: a high-born pantomime horse with two back ends. The tittering double dips.

Add to that the rising whiff of sleaze emanating from Leveson, which is finally beginning to curdle in the air around Cameron, and little wonder he has been losing his temper in a series of rather pathetic outbursts, like a man instigating a minor road-rage incident after rear-ending a milk float with his bumper car.

The further Cameron's stock slides, the less unelectable Ed Miliband appears. Miliband, unfortunately, looks and sounds like a dork. And not just any dork either, but the dorkiest dork in Dorking; someone you wouldn't cast as a dork in a drama-documentary for fear of looking implausible. But in a fight between the school dork and a dim, angry prefect with a warped sense of entitlement, only an absolute sodpot wouldn't root for the dork.

Assuming, that is, said sodpot had bothered paying attention to the scrap in the first place. If neither side really grabs you, you might just stay at home, like the majority of people last week. Only nine people actually voted in last week's local elections. Nine. And three of them only followed the signs to the polling station in the hope it was some sort of knocking shop euphemism. The low turnout has been blamed on bad weather, which was almost certainly a factor – but on the other hand, if you won't vote because of drizzle, you weren't that arsed in the first place. People will queue in the rain to see Kasabian in concert. They'll queue in the rain to enter Abercrombie & Fitch. They'll queue in the rain for any old shit, as long as it isn't democracy.

Someone recently told me that politics enjoys a level of media attention that's seriously disproportionate to its actual relevance or popularity. It should really only get about as much coverage as golf does, they argued. Both golf and politics have a core of hardcore fans surrounded by a healthy-sized cloud of casual followers. But most of the population doesn't really give a toss unless there's a big personality involved.

The more I think about it, the more that analogy rings true. The problem for politicians is that their chosen sport looks increasingly weird and arcane in the present day – like water polo or lacrosse. The uniforms are antiquated, the rules are stifling, the action is boring, and they're constantly terrified of upsetting their sponsors. The spectators don't understand the lingo, don't think there's much skill involved, and suspect the game's rigged anyway.

Increasingly, in order to succeed, MPs have to transcend the sport entirely by becoming celebrities first and politicians second. As Boris Johnson and George Galloway indicate, the public responds when it encounters a strong flavour, simply because it at least has flavour. In Edinburgh's Pentland Hills ward, an independent candidate calling himself Professor Pongoo – who claimed to come from outer space and campaigned inside a giant penguin costume – won more votes than the Liberal Democrats.

Jarvis Cocker recognised that the best way to turn your weaknesses into strengths is to magnify them: rather than trying to disguise his inherent gawky perviness, he accentuated it at every opportunity until he became a star. Maybe if Miliband overly emphasised his slightly peculiar and nerdish persona it would pay dividends. If he started collecting Magic: The Gathering trading cards and riding to the Commons on a little blue tricycle, with his knees all sticking out like a doofus.

After all, the more Cameron drops his guard and displays his temper, the less robotic and the more true to himself he seems to appear. Except in his case, that's a problem. No wonder he always used to come across as a robot. His software was trying to keep him in check. And much like public enthusiasm, that licence has now expired.