He's Not The Messiah

Last year, sometime during the spring, I remember seeing a headline on Huffington Post: "The British Obama?" Underneath it was a picture of someone I had never seen before, but I soon became rather well-informed about him. It was Nick Clegg, the charasmatic Liberal Democrat leader who, it was supposed, would take advantage of the weakness of Gordon Brown's Labour Party to turn the Lib-Dems into a viable force for the first time in quite a few generations. After decades playing a centrist role in British politics, the liberals to Labour's actual socialists, the Lib-Dems had finally done what the rise of "New Labour" suggested for them all along, and simply become the left-wing party. Clegg seemed to do well in the debates, certainly looking like the more viable left-wing candidate than Brown. Heading into the elections, some polls showed the Lib-Dems competitive to beat Labour for second or even challenge the Conservatives for the national lead.

Then the election happened. While the Liberals did gain about 1% in the popular vote over 2005, they also lost five seats. Labour had a similarly disappointing night, while David Cameron's Tories notched 97 gains and came oh-so-close to an absolute majority.

A majority which Nick Clegg, he who ran his party distinctly left of Labour, handed him.

The Liberal Democrats are currently polling around 10% for a prospective U.K. general election. That's abysmal. That's less than half what they got in the election. It's worse than they've ever done in the handful of decades they've been around. According to UK Polling Report's swingometer, a performance that bad would have them getting a whopping, uhhh, 18 seats. That's about a third what they've got now. The Lib-Dem-sponsored AV referendum is polling right about 50/50, but with a bad trend. The only reason they went into coalition with the Conservatives was to get that referendum. Can you imagine if it fails? How much damage Nick Clegg, who was really supposed to be the savior of the Liberal Democrats, would end up having done to his party? With Ed Miliband leading Labour back to the left, I can envision a future in which the Lib-Dems kind of stop existing. It was always a sort of weird arrangement: the left-wing majority in Britain decided, for no good reason, to have two parties rather than one, despite the winner-take-all nature of their electoral system. It makes no sense; there's a reason you tend to see two-party systems in countries that use first-past-the-post.

This coalition has killed the Liberal Democrats. I don't see how they recover. All their liberal supporters have decided that, well, voting for the Lib-Dems gives them Tories. What's left? Trying to be that centrist party again? Centrist parties have a problem, which is that they are bloody boring. I can't imagine that the conservative voters will become a base for the LibDems. Nick Clegg has destroyed the party.