I might have some fairly fundamental disagreements with Nicola Sturgeon on the best future for Scotland, but I have a great deal of time for her as a human being and as a politician. She is a much cleverer tactician than Alex Salmond ever was. I am perfectly happy to argue with people on their political outlook, but I’m not struck on the sort of nasty personal mudslinging that we see at PMQs, or in Labour’s deeply misleading personal attack on Nick Clegg last year and I sure as hell am not going to make up my mind how to vote based on how someone eats a bacon sandwich. Nor, I suspect, are the rest of the population.

It appears that after her very good performance in Thursday’s Leaders’ Debate that Nicola Sturgeon is, highly predictably, being done over by the right wing press in much the same way that Nick Clegg was in 2010. Remember Nick Barlow’s wonderful way of dealing with that – the #nickcleggsfault meme on Twitter where Clegg was blamed from everything to the weather to the cat being sick?

Of course, Nicola is getting much different treatment to a man. Her clothes come in to it. The Daily Fail describes her as a “glamorous power-dressing imperatrix.” Wow. A woman goes out wearing smart clothes. How remarkable. Of course, if she rocked up for FMQs in Parliament in her jeans, they’d have something to say about that, too. On appearance, women really can’t win.

The Telegraph’s splash is a bit different. Last night, when I read their account that she’d told the French ambassador that she’d prefer David Cameron to be Prime Minister, it didn’t seem right to me. Apart from anything else, the Nicola Sturgeon I know has more sense than to be so indiscreet. The paper bases its story on a memo written by a UK Government official who wasn’t even at the meeting in question and who actually doubts its veracity. It’s all very third hand and clearly questionable.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that SNP strategists who, after all, have winning independence as their prime objective, feel that a majority Tory government at Westminster would increase support for separation. That’s why Alex Salmond has been doing so much trolling about the SNP’s demands in a hung Parliament. He wants to scare voters in Middle England into voting Tory for “stability.” This story, however, is just so palpably questionable. It didn’t take terribly wrong for the French to deny it, either, as the Guardian reports:

The Telegraph claimed that the allegation was contained in a leaked UK government memorandum, thought to come from the Foreign Office, which sets out an official account of the meeting from France’s experienced consul general in Edinburgh, Pierre-Alain Coffinier. But Coffinier told the Guardian that this was untrue. He said he had checked his notes of that meeting, which took place at Holyrood after first minister’s questions on 26 February. “I have looked at my notes and absolutely no preference has been expressed by anyone regarding the outcome of the election,” he said. “Which suggests neither Nicola nor my ambassador said anything.”

The Telegraph has so far not bothered to amend its story to reflect that denial. The Telegraph has got it right with some ridiculous stories about the SNP before. My favourite is the one about the 7 month battle over Alex Salmond’s breeks, which only really becomes a story because of his government’s cavalier approach to freedom of information laws.

There are many valid reasons to attack the SNP, not least that they’ve been so obsessed with independence these last four years that they’ve taken their eye off the ball on actually running the country. The prospect of a group of SNP MPs voting on counter-terrorism legislation given their nonchalance about civil liberties is not fun. I mean, they’ve presided over unprecedented stop and search of children, allowed armed police to be used for routine patrols and not done anything when senior police, including the chief constable, tell Parliament things that we later find out aren’t true. If you care about these issues, it’s really important that there are lots of Liberal Democrats there to prevent a parliamentary majority or the sort of draconian measures both Tories and Labour are capable of implementing.

Today’s headlines, are, I suspect, only the start of the onslaught for Nicola. I suspect she, like Nick Clegg before her, will be massively unworried by the disapproval of the Daily Mail and the Telegraph.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings