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UK PoliGAF: Should Clegg go?

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Huw_Dawson

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So there's been a lot of hubub since the EU elections surrounding the Lib Dems, which can only mean one thing - leadership shenanigans.

Lord Oakeshott, a Lib Dem peer, commissioned a private poll that indicaded that several key Lib Dem seats, including Nick Clegg's own Sheffield Hallam seat, would be lost in the 2015 General Election, and indicated that public support for the party in those seats would be somewhat higher if Clegg was not leader. The poll was leaked, then his involvement in it came out. He's now resigned the party: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27604131

A poll on the main Lib Dem blog, LibDemVoice, indicated that close to forty percent of Lib Dem members want Clegg gone: http://www.libdemvoice.org/exclusiv...-want-nick-clegg-to-stay-as-leader-40408.html with a majority favouring current Lib Dem president Tim Farron to replace him if an election was to occur that Clegg was not in.

The party lost ten EU seats and a massive chunk of its councillors in the May elections.

My current opinion is that the LDs will do a lot better in 2015 if Clegg goes (and the coalition is folded in November or so) but as there seems to be no appetite for it in the upper echelons of the party, it isn't going to happen.

I'm interested in hearing what relatively normal people think about all of this, as I'm really only getting the Lib Dem membership side of the story here. :\
 
My view on the Lib Dems is come the next General Election they will be back to obscurity and watching from the sidelines. They're done, regardless of who leads them.
 
He proved totally spineless on key issues which got them the votes they needed to have a say in parliament. He should of gone yonks ago.
 
The problem is who replaces him

Tim Farron is too unlikeable to do well with the public, david laws is too far to the right of the party to be elected as their leader in the first place and vince cable is seen as too old.

Only decent candidate is a return for champagne charlie, but is the party ready to trust him again as leader?
 
Gumball said:
My view on the Lib Dems is come the next General Election they will be back to obscurity and watching from the sidelines. They're done, regardless of who leads them.
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Basically this. In any case, Cleggy did not deserve to lead the Lib Dems because of the Coalition. So slimy~ I suppose he wanted the Lib Dems to not be 3rd place for once, but they'll go back to it soon enough. If they're lucky, that is.
 
Yep, he's toxic for his party. Nobody trusts him anymore after breaking his cast iron tuition fees pledge.

In the immediate aftermath of that his AV referendum never even got of the ground people hated him so much.
 
Gumball said:
My view on the Lib Dems is come the next General Election they will be back to obscurity and watching from the sidelines. They're done, regardless of who leads them.
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Same here. If I was him, I'd just see it through. Why not?

As he says in this interview:

"If I thought that anything would be really solved, any of our real dilemmas would be addressed by changing leadership, changing strategy, changing approaches, bailing out now, changing direction, then I wouldn't hesitate advocating it".

Still, being in government has really aged him. He looks haggared!

Lib-Dem-leader-Nick-Clegg-009.jpg
 
He does, but the party is done for awhile I think.
As a country we want something different, but I'm not sure how well that'll work out...
 
It doesn't matter. The lib dems lost any appeal for most people as soon as they got in bed with the tories(same would have happened had it been labour).

They aren't a none of the above vote for left or right wing people disillusioned with the big two anymore.

Cable no longer has credibility on the left and never had any on the right, Alexander is an orange booker like Clegg with no credibility on any side.
 
No. For two reasons:

1 - It'd be bad for them. Whilst I personally don't care about that, it's a reason why they won't do it. This close to an election, they can't; OK, the election's not for (just under) a year, but party leaders are important and the Lib Dems simply don't have the star power to bring in someone new that the public know. Uncle Vince was popular but he also seems to hate the party about as much as everyone else does. Tim Farron is a slimey cunt and no one outside of us political wankers know who the fuck he is, either. The same goes for Miliband - it's just too close to the election. Furthermore, they'll look like they're in chaos (which they are, but they don't want to present that).

2 - He's been a force for good for the Lib Dems. He's gotten more Liberal policies passed as Acts than all the Liberal leaders since Lloyd George combined. The Liberal Democrats were never going to get a majority, Nick Clegg was never going to PM - people that voted Liberal that expected to get their manifesto enacted were so detached from the democratic process that they're asking for their desires to be ignored. Liberal policies were only ever going to passed as part of a coalition, and that means giving up other policies. Clegg gets too much shit for that; If the Lib Dems ever wanted to stop standing on the side lines getting laughed at at PMQs and actually use their time to pass laws they agree with, this is what had to happen. He has my respect for that.
 
They could maybe gain a small amount of the public's respect back if they tossed away Clegg, and elected a party leader /Deputy PM who spends the next year absolutely tearing the Tories a new one, and ripping apart their policies from the inside. An inside man to stand up against their horrible ideas.

Other than that, they're done.
 
In 2010 I lived in the Sheffield Hallam constituency and I'm embarrassed to say that I voted for Clegg. He can't show his face in Sheffield any more.

Judging from these polls, the Lib Dems would do slightly better at the next general election without him but either way the Lib Dems have severely damaged their reputation with their core supporters, especially students.
 
The fate of the Lib Dems was sealed when they entered the coalition with the Tories. They alienated their core base, and dissuaded the protest vote aspects of their election chances by becoming part of the establishment. The fact that their leadership was exposed as ageist Machiavellian assholes in ousting Sir. Menzies Campbell still lingers with them too I guess.

Forget getting rid of Clegg. Unless they have a complete clearout of their entire upper echelons and a rebranding campaign to distance themselves from the Tories by the next election, I figure they're looking at 10-20 years in the political wilderness. They've already been incredibly marginalised in Scotland.
 
Yes and no.

Yes because the lib dems are out for blood

No, because the coalition was their only realistic chance at power and so they took it. They can't blame clegg for that, just like they can't blame him when they go back to a non-coalition position and fade back into the woodwork
 
industrian said:
The fate of the Lib Dems was sealed when they entered the coalition with the Tories. They alienated their core base, and dissuaded the protest vote aspects of their election chances by becoming part of the establishment. The fact that their leadership was exposed as ageist Machiavellian assholes in ousting Sir. Menzies Campbell still lingers with them too I guess.

Forget getting rid of Clegg. Unless they have a complete clearout of their entire upper echelons and a rebranding campaign to distance themselves from the Tories by the next election, I figure they're looking at 10-20 years in the political wilderness. They've already been incredibly marginalised in Scotland.
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100% this coupled with him turning his back against uni students (majority lib dem voters a the last election?). Clegg is done and nobody will be taking the Lib Dems seriously until a new leader is chosen and a complete re-shuffle and re-design of the party occurs.
 
just give cable the job and take him off grand moff cameron's leash. let him have a year of rabble rousing in the hope of salvaging some fragment of party dignity in time for the next election, then when their seats are double ended by ukip and labour next year, they can have a long hard think as to why they actually exist.

elections are always an undesirable parade of cunts, but 2015 is going to be a banner year for insipid, depressing or all out hateful assholes pan handling for our approval.
 
I think it was incredibly naive and in hindsight suicidal for him to lead them into coalition with a party that that is not just much more powerful but has very different political views. Him leaving would give them a start on the road to recovery. Remember that it was Nick Clegg apologising for breaking electoral promises, not the Liberal Democrats. Much of the apathy towards the party now is entirely his fault.
 
OUnmdbE.jpg


^^^ This will rightfully haunt him forever. No party with him at the helm will ever have any power.

I think right now the Lib Dems are probably hoping to basically use him as a sponge to soak up all the hatred they've earned over the last 4 years. They'll either drop him in the next 6 months or so and try and build up some support before the election or just face the inevitable annihilation with him as leader and try to rebuild afterwards.

Still pretty crazy they only got one MEP. One.

But it was all worth it for the AV+ election though wasn't it.
 
I think Clegg is a lot less spineless than people make out. The Liberal Democrats hold about as much sway in government as you might expect from a party outnumbered by their senior partners six to one. The tuition fees thing was a blunder but there's an argument to be made that the Lib Dems, instead of doing the easy thing and abstaining, tried to mould an inevitable rise in tuition fees into something fairer for students. The thing to do would have been to stay the fuck away though.

In 2010, Clegg had three options:

1) Form a coalition with the most popular party in the country.
2) Form what would fairly be called a 'coalition of losers' with the second place party - and Labour seemed as unenthusiastic about this as anyone.
3) Let another election be called and hope that the numbers, possibly at the Lib Dem's expense, came out so differently that no co-operation was necessary.

Clegg's painted as a closet Tory, eagerly enabling everything Cameron wants to do. I'd argue that he made the only feasible decision and is unfairly taking a kicking for it. The government policies that people are so opposed to are largely (if not entirely) Conservative policies. Clegg could be making more of a nuisance of himself on every front, but with what mandate? Perhaps foolishly, perhaps wisely, he's only picked key issues to dig his heels in on.

He's undoubtedly unpopular and his exit might restore some faith in the Liberal Democrats, but not so greatly that they shouldn't just wait until after the next general election.
 
shorty_symd said:
100% this coupled with him turning his back against uni students (majority lib dem voters a the last election?). Clegg is done and nobody will be taking the Lib Dems seriously until a new leader is chosen and a complete re-shuffle and re-design of the party occurs.
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Well, I come from Scotland so I can't really comment on tuition fees I'm afraid. But from my perspective: the UK constituency I'm registered in is Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk. I voted for Michael Moore because, quite simply, in a rural shithole like that it's either the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives. So it's nice to know that I'm keeping the Tories out of my region and not enabling them in any way by voting for Mr. Moore...

For anyone that's curious: before the Scottish election in 2011, the Liberal Democrats had 16 seats in our Parliament. After the election they had 5. 8 of those seats were lost to the SNP, who were ideologically close enough to the LD to benefit from the fallout.
 
Doesn't matter.

The Lib Dems will be extinct after the next election, he might as well be there when the asteroid hits.
 
Doesn't matter who leads them, the went into government with the Tories. You lie with dogs don't be surprised when you get up with fleas. Will take a long time to get back to where they were if ever
 
operon said:
Doesn't matter who leads them, the went into government with the Tories. You lie with dogs don't be surprised when you get up with fleas. Will take a long time to get back to where they were if ever
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Exactly. The liberals were dead on day one when this happened. Most liberals hoped for a Lib Lab pact. It was obvious that the tories would just bully them into accepting any old shit because the liberals craved power so much. Clegg has been a walking PR disaster for them. He just sits there in PMQ's and nods like the Churchill dog.
 
pulsemyne said:
Exactly. The liberals were dead on day one when this happened. Most liberals hoped for a Lib Lab pact. It was obvious that the tories would just bully them into accepting any old shit because the liberals craved power so much. Clegg has been a walking PR disaster for them. He just sits there in PMQ's and nods like the Churchill dog.
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I think that the Lib Dems that expect a Lib Lab pact didn't read their own manifesto - it was a truly Orange Book'er manifesto and that wing of the party is far more aligned with the Tories than with Labour.
 
I genuinely don't think it makes much difference either way. Although, the embarrassment caused if Clegg didn't win his seat in the election would set the Lib Dems back even further.

I really think that the Lib Dems will struggle to find a role in UK politics for the next few years. The Orange Book-ers won out a while back, but the coalition with the Tories has actually shown the public what their general attitude is. Their key selling-point has been the idea of being different, and a genuine alternative to the other big parties (e.g. 2010 broadcast with the pieces of paper fluttering around, broken promises etc... lol). But joining the Tories has shown they are quick and willing to join the establishment.

So, why would people vote Lib Dem now? They are no longer a vote against the 'establishment' or main parties. Not only that, but they aren't significantly differently aligned on the Left/Right spectrum.

Clegg isn't the problem. If they want to stay relevant, they have to present themselves as a genuinely different option, but the Orange Book is now the Lib Dems so... I don't see where they can go?
 
CyclopsRock said:
I think that the Lib Dems that expect a Lib Lab pact didn't read their own manifesto - it was a truly Orange Book'er manifesto and that wing of the party is far more aligned with the Tories than with Labour.
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Whilst you are right about the manifesto and the orange book takeover the lib dems spent the better part of this century aligning themselves to the left of labour.
 
he has been a clueless backtracking idiot since he formed the coalition and out of touch on nearly every issue.

He must have been embarrassed when farage showed him up on both occasions in that debate.
 
Acorn said:
Whilst you are right about the manifesto and the orange book takeover the lib dems spent the better part of this century aligning themselves to the left of labour.
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They were always more "liberal" to Labour's "left", though - for example, for about 3 decades it was Labour policy to leave the EEC/EU. The Liberals were for LGBT rights and drug legalisation long before any of the other parties. They were economically left, yeah, but they were distinct from Labour; However, that's not who people in 2010 were voting for.
 
Considering how the Lib Dems have sold out all their campaign promises for a shot at power, I think it will take more than him resigning to get me voting for them.

But it'll be a start. Get shot of Vince "flog the Royal Mail to the lowest bidder" Cable while they're at it.
 
idk if it makes much sense to do it now or after the election but he's a bad politician who has made nearly everything he stood for worse and should be a dead man walking.

Gawge said:
Clegg isn't the problem. If they want to stay relevant, they have to present themselves as a genuinely different option, but the Orange Book is now the Lib Dems so... I don't see where they can go?
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the irony is that the orange book was an attempt to establish themselves as a plausible, coherent alternative - one not as wedded to the belief that government has all the solutions as labour, but concerned way more about social justice than the tories.
 
A Tory minority government or a Labour+LibDem minority government both would have preserved the integrity of Clegg's 2010 campaign better than the coalition. I don't blame Clegg for taking the coalition offer (in order in part to prove in subsequent elections that the LibDems aren't a sideshow party, they're ready for primetime, and that they're able to lead if they are elected), but I think the problem is that in showing they were ready to lead, they also showed that they were mostly a party about winning rather than a party about principles. This is not uncommon in any democracy, of course, but I don't think it bodes well for next election now that Labour is at least a little bit out of the proverbial doghouse and refreshed.
 
No. Every other party have some forn of legitimate positive momentum other than the Liberal Democrats. It would be suicide for the Lib Dems to force an election by getting rid of their leader, especially when the economy is recovering.
 
Stumpokapow said:
A Tory minority government or a Labour+LibDem minority government both would have preserved the integrity of Clegg's 2010 campaign better than the coalition. I don't blame Clegg for taking the coalition offer (in order in part to prove in subsequent elections that the LibDems aren't a sideshow party, they're ready for primetime, and that they're able to lead if they are elected), but I think the problem is that in showing they were ready to lead, they also showed that they were mostly a party about winning rather than a party about principles. This is not uncommon in any democracy, of course, but I don't think it bodes well for next election now that Labour is at least a little bit out of the proverbial doghouse and refreshed.
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One might argue that being a substitute with integrity doesn't help change the outcome of the match.
 
CyclopsRock said:
They were always more "liberal" to Labour's "left", though - for example, for about 3 decades it was Labour policy to leave the EEC/EU. The Liberals were for LGBT rights and drug legalisation long before any of the other parties. They were economically left, yeah, but they were distinct from Labour; However, that's not who people in 2010 were voting for.
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Only reason I mentioned it was because I don't think it's that out there that those who don't pay a great deal of attention to politics expected a more Charles Kennedy/Ming Campbell semi Social Democrat party when they voted.

That isn't the lib dem's fault but it is what it is.
 
Succinct Verbosity said:
No. Every other party have some forn of legitimate positive momentum other than the Liberal Democrats. It would be suicide for the Lib Dems to force an election by getting rid of their leader, especially when the economy is recovering.
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I don't think it would really force an election. Aside from the fact they have legislated the next election's date (as opposed to simply convention or a gentlemen's agreement), the Tories don't have any big bits of legislation left to pass. For the next year, the House will basically be doing absolutely nothing because they've run out of entries on the coalition agreement. I suspect that the Tories would love nothing more than a year in minority government, still not passing anything but slowly earning the rewards from the recovering economy. The only possible problem would be the 2015 budget.
 
Acorn said:
More of an issue for the next parliament. We wouldn't turn independent for two years on the event of a yes vote.
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I meant more along the lines of the immediate ramifications in regards to job suitability for the current British cabinet. They'd surely have to carry the cross for setting up the environment that made the dissolution of the union happen, as not even Eden fucked up that bad.
 
industrian said:
I meant more along the lines of the immediate ramifications in regards to job suitability for the current British cabinet. They'd surely have to carry the cross for setting up the environment that made the dissolution of the union happen, as not even Eden fucked up that bad.
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Not really, the Scotland office minister would probably resign. Doesn't effect Cameron and co. They know Scotland hates them already regardless of a yes or no.
 
Deputy Prime Minister as the NHS was dismantled, lied to the electorate on tuition fees, betrayed party supporters by bedding the Tories.

I'd like him to go, but it would serve no purpose unless someone as charismatic as Charles Kennedy stepped in the gap and fought for the party moderates/left.
 
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