When are the Lib Dems going to quit the coalition?

[mwooldri]

And as importantly: when is Nick Clegg going to resign?

I'm sorry to say this but it's time the coalition was dissolved, and Nick Clegg replaced with more passionate, more directed leadership, that gives a message and direction different from the Tories and Labour.

I cannot wait for 2015 quick enough, when the next General is going to be held if the coalition stays together - unless things turn out so well for the Tories that Cameron feels confident about going to the country. I think Nick Clegg and Co. are going to hang around in the coalition, doing what they can, until their time is up. "make hay while the sun shines" seems to be at play here, whilst forgetting to sow the crop for next time. It's what the Tories did under Major and what Labour did under Brown.

[LeftishBrit]

1. They are caught between the devil and the deep

If they leave the coalition now, it will force an election in which they are likely to be nearly wiped out. If they don't, then they will be nearly or completely wiped out in 2015.

I am sure that there is lots of pressure on Clegg, and that he may be forced out before 2015, especially if the Tories pressurize Cameron to sit on the LDs even more than he is already.

I wouldn't be surprised if the LDs split formally into two parties before we're all much older.

[fedsron2us]

2. Their performance in the local election where I live was dire.

They were beaten into last place in all seats bar one getting beaten not only by Tories and Labour but also by UKIP and Greens where they stood. This was in elections for a District Council which the Lib Dems had run for 20 years from 1980-2000.Clegg is killing the party. Personally I suspect he is a Tory mole who has always had that as his ambition but I suppose that may just be my paranoia running riot. If they want to survive they need to quit the coalition and do it now, ditching Cleggie along the way. While they will certainly get a kicking in any early General Election it is unlikely to be worse than what happens to them in 2015 if they keep propping up Cameron.

[Ken Burch]

4. That last thought has occurred to me as well.

You could write a book about Clegg's era as LD leader and title it as "The Strange Rebirth Of National Liberal Britain".

[Anarcho-Socialist]

3. I expect they'll see it through till 2015

When the Lib Dems become ex-ministers and ex-MPs they'll be able to whore out their knowledge and connections from being in government to the private sector, where they'll sit on executive boards taking a few hundred grand a year while doing little.

[Ken Burch]

5. If Cameron were returned with a majority(not outside the realm of possibility)

He could easily give most of the LD electoral victims of 2015 life peerages within two or three years, at the New Year's and Monarch's Birthday's Honours lists, if I understand it correctly.

They'd have no real power, but there is a stipend and they'd have somewhere to go each morning so they wouldn't just be sitting around the house in their undershorts.

[LeftishBrit]

6. Ugghhh, don't! The thought of Cameron being returned with a majority - or indeed at all - makes me

feel ill.



Whether the LDs , and other electoral victims, could get life peerages or not, depends on whether and to what extent they achieve House of Lords reform.

In general, top politicians can usually convert their government experience into directorships or media gigs, even if their political careers go down the drain. This was spectacularly true for Blair; and would certainly be true for Clegg. It's often not quite so easy for ordinary backbench MPs, especially if they have been away from the job market for a while (and even less true for their staff). Thus, Clegg and the other Ministers may be far more willing to risk their party's all, than those a bit lower down in the party - but of course the leaders are the ones who make the decisions. Other MPs, as Gilbert and Sullivan put in the 19th century, 'if they've got a brain and a cerebellum too/ They have to leave that brain outside/ And vote just as their leaders tell 'em to!'

'They'd have no real power, but there is a stipend and they'd have somewhere to go each morning so they wouldn't just be sitting around the house in their undershorts. '

Sounds not very different from the LDs' position right now!