How big a price will Clegg have paid for his seat at the top table?

I live in a Lib Dem stronghold. Wonder what it will be tomorrow.

Oblivion. vote is halved in scotland if the polls are to be believed

Depends in your constituency who is in second place – if its Tories they are safer

if he gets av it’ll have been worth it IMO

We’ve got a Labour MP. The Lib Dems are strong at a local level, but this may be seen as an opportunity to give them a bit of a going over.

Duffed up then – their vote will go to labour

if he gets av it’ll have been worth it IMO

That’s looking very unlikely though.

yeh 🙁 🙄

A lot of so called Lib Dem supporters are totally brainless about this.
If Clegg had not got into bed with Dave then the lib dems would have achieved precisely eff all in this parliment. As it is they have furthered lots of Lib dem causes by a fair margin. The price is supporting stuff that would have got through anyway. If the lib dems want to secure total wipe out for themselves then they should carry on the way they are going, calling Clegg a traitor etc. They were actually poised to make a massive difference in the next parliment, if only they could have accepted Cleggs so called concessions. They won a small proportion of the vote in the last election, actually less than before, so any microscopic progress by the lib dems is a good thing, unfortunatly the lib dem supporters are deluded into thinking Clegg won the election and became prime minister and are now dissapointed that coalition isn’t behaving like a lib dem landlslide majority. Get a grip an be appreciative of what he has done. What other choice did he have? What would you have done?

(BTW I’m not a lib dem I think I’m a tory but I dont really know)

How big a price will Clegg have paid for his seat at the top table?

30 pieces of silver, I believe

toys, the way I see it is that they prob did a deal with whoever offered the best chance of a change in the voting system.

Which causes do you think have achieved progress ?

I doubt many people really imagined that LD would really wield any power in the coalition, did they ? 😯

toys19 +10

toys19 – Member

What other choice did he have? What would you have done?

Negotiate the same or similar concession in order to support a queens speech and let Cameron run a minority government. he would have got similar concession and not taken the blame for tory policy with the opportunity to vote down any bills not in the queens speech.

he was seduced by the chance of power and made an enormous misjudgement for which he and his party will suffer.

he was seduced by the chance of power

I think the fact that he is a right-wing free-market neo-liberal probably came into it too.

They’re a spent force for the foreseeable

A sitting government party is going to struggle to keep support during hard times, a party that’s only along to make the numbers up is dead in the water

A lot of so called Lib Dem supporters are totally brainless about this.

I take the point you are making – personally I think the a big part of the problem has been that up until recently Nick Clegg just looked like he was having such a great time hanging out with David Cameron.

Saying things like the Liberals aren’t a left-of-centre party any more isn’t what most Lib Dem party members would agree with either.

I also think they have achieved very little in terms of concessions tbh – and have been successfully played by the Tories.

toys, the way I see it is that they prob did a deal with whoever offered the best chance of a change in the voting system.

I don’t think so. There was a R4 play about the goings on immediately after the election that was supposed to be based on the “facts” from a variety of insiders and I’m sure that it was more or less as it appeared fromt he outside i.e. Clegg made the principled decision to work with the party with the most seats, which he then stuck to.

I’ll go and see if it’s still available as a podcast.

well the major concession is a vote on av.. Cant see the tories doing that on their own..

I seem to remember they (edit: were said to) spoke to both sides at some length, which might suggest otherwise

It was called Five Days in May, by Matthew Solon – bumpf here

Alas, no longer available on iPlayer.

toys, I see a defeated vote as worse than none

well the major concession is a vote on av.

Which the Tories campaigned viciously and cynically against, despite promising not to.

I seem to remember they (edit: were said to) spoke to both sides at some length, which might suggest otherwise

I seem to remember that they didn’t, which might suggest that you are wrong.

Pretty sure they did speak to both sides at some length.

Sky News VT

He’ll be all right Jack.
The Lib Dems are shagged though.

telegraph on the subject:

4:11PM BST 11 May 2010

The development paves the way for the Conservatives to agree a power-sharing deal with Nick Clegg’s party.

It comes after senior Labour figures urged Gordon Brown to “call it quits” on efforts to form a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats.

There were reports that Mr Brown was set to resign as prime minister on Tuesday night.

The Lib Dems opened up talks with Labour yesterday morning but at a meeting late last night, some Lib Dem MPs shifted back towards a Tory deal.

One senior Lib Dem said: “There is a sense that the party has realised that the Conservative deal is the best deal on offer. The Tories are desperate and they’ve improved their offer a lot.
“As long as the party can get over the emotional hurdle of backing the Tories, that’s where we’ll end up.”

and in the south west where labour are no where and the choice is Lib or Tory?

and in the south west where labour are no where and the choice is Lib or Tory?

don’t you have some sort of Cornetto independence party or something 🙂

Lib Dems have to hold the coalition together for the full term when the global economy will be well on the road to recovery. They will then be remembered as helping get the country through a bad spell rather than the general perception that they are responsible for the current mid/end recession doom and gloom position we currently find ourselves in and having their vote collapse for the foreseeable future.

I don’t think Labour had any real intentions of forming a coalition government. They new how bad they had wrecked the economy and that this current term was always going to be a poisoned chalice.

The vote on AV was no concession. The introduction of AV would have been. Referendums are extraordinary rare in the Britain compared to other comparable countries, the Tories didn’t even bother with a referendum when Britain joined the EEC. And the last Labour government didn’t bother with referendums on issues such as whether there should be direct mayoral elections in London, or the GLA. No one was asked if they wanted the first past the post system, there was no need for a referendum to change it. The Tories gave the LibDems nothing, and the AV referendum was designed simply so that the question of electoral reform would not be raised again for a very long time. Any future Labour government will now struggle to introduce electoral reform without a referendum as a result of the precedence established by the Tories. Smart move by the Tories, stupid move by the LibDems. Electoral reform will of course eventually arrive to Britain, but the Tories have ensure that that day will be as long coming as possible.

They new how bad they had wrecked the economy

It’s worse than that, they wrecked most of the Western world’s economy too – bastids

Any future Labour government will now struggle to introduce electoral reform without a referendum

Is there any sign that this was ever likely Ernie ?

Scaredypants,

What I remember was that the Lib Dems spoke exclusively to the Tories for a while. At the point that there seemed to be a deal on the table they went and spoke to Labour but then very quickly went back to the Tories once further concessions came forward. In other words, they were never serious about doing a deal with Labour but used them in order to get more leverage. There was considerable discussion about that as being “a bit off” at the time.

Is there any sign that this was ever likely Ernie ?

Yep, plenty of signs……..many senior Labour politicians now support proportional representation, and general support for PR within the Labour Party, has been growing for many years now. That is stark contrast with the Tory Party.

The Lib Dems opened up talks with Labour yesterday morning but at a meeting late last night, some Lib Dem MPs shifted back towards a Tory deal

Can’t take 12hrs to say “sorry Gordon it’s only right that I go with them” can it ?

Uplink,that’s total tripe.

they went and spoke to Labour

OK – so you’re now saying they did indeed talk to them?

Uplink,that’s total tripe

you’re kidding right?

There was no desire nor any serious talking amongst labour or Lib dem for a deal – especially as it still would not have given them a majority. The choices were for a formalcoalition or support a minority government both with the tories

The collapse of large parts of the world’s banking system caused by mismanagement of a small offshore European island’s economy?,if only.