Shortly before the 2010 general election, aware that the Conservatives were unlikely to win a majority, an anxious David Cameron asked Angela Merkel what it was like to lead a coalition government. “The little party always gets smashed!” she mischievously replied. As he met the German chancellor in Sweden in recent days, Cameron could have been forgiven for recalling her remark. Like their sister party in Germany, the Free Democrats, which lost all of its seats in the 2013 Bundestag election, the Liberal Democrats have indeed been smashed.
Since 2010, they have lost a third of their members, 1,500 of their councillors, all but one of their MEPs, nine by-election deposits and more than half of their previous opinion-poll support. The Tories, by contrast, have retained most of their 2010 vote share of 36 per cent and have consistently exceeded expectations in local elections. “We knew we would pay a price for working with the Conservatives,” said Nick Clegg in his recent speech at the Bloomberg headquarters in London.
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