The libdems are finished..I have no joy in saying it.But there has been no-one in the party to speak the truth about the situation that they have put themselves into. They are firmly in Camerons cleft stick and heve no future as an independant party.

Oh look, Mr Clegg! There is writing appearing on the wall...

If you lay with dogs you will get fleas. It was never going to be progressive forming a coalition with the Tories. The voters have made this clear. Mr pledge were are your new clothes now?

@Marcus 'We need a realignment of parties in the UK' That won't happen without electoral reform. Whoops!

As a non Brit may I say this blog makes for incredibly entertaining entertainment. Most of you really do think government is the answer to all your problems. Let me clue you, government is the cause of your problems, not the solution.

Your country is on its economic knees yet some of you are going on as if the way to take care of your problems is to borrow even more money. What party you have in office makes not an iota of difference because ya'al are little more than a bunch of Bolshies.

It's my honest opinion that the UK has gone over the cliff. I see nothing that can save whats left of your standard of living. You have no manufacturing to speak of. Scottish oil is well on the way to running out. Can't ya'al at least produce an automobile that can stand on its own two feet in the home market. The Elephant in the room is your mindsets. You want it without working for it. Without the proper work ethic you don't stand a chance.

Maybe Nick sould write a primer on 'Coalitions, and how they work' and dish it out to his MPs and Party. Maybe he should also send a copy to every household, gratis, with the compliments of The office of the DPM.

I have a lot of time for Clegg because he saw that the Cooalition came about through necessity, and Lib Dems can't be that choosey with whom they go into coalition with (obviously not the BNP/Facists, but thats taken for granted). And being a small Party they are going to have a small effect. The Lib Dems are expecting too much if they think their tail can wag the dog. And the Tories amazingly have conceeded quite a bit to the Lib Dems, which frankly Labour would not have done in the same position. But Nick is wrong about a 'progressive majority'. There was no need for Blair to extend the hand of friendship to the Lib Dems because Blair came in with a thumping majority,and it would have looked pretty silly to have a coalition then. Same in 2001. In 2005 maybe talks were opened, but Labour weren't really all that sincere about Coalition politics. They didn't really understand what coalition was all about.
Nick has been probably been the best DPM since Clem was DPM to Churchill and does understand Coalition politics like Clem did.

Great post from Gracie.
The poll figures and the economic figures speak volumes. Clegg is a twerp.

An example of Cleggs attitude is the legislation which would have decimated the NHS in England was signed off by him and he hadn't even read it!! What an arrogant, complacent little turd of a man.

I didn't say he was great as I don't agree with Lib Dem policies, nor the Tory ones. But I'm not going to doubt his sincerity. Clegg is not the sole reason why 'millions of people are being driven into poverty'. 'poverty' is not going to be eradicated at a stroke. Its more complicated than that. Why do people fall into the poverty trap and can't get out, however hard we try, perhaps for sociological reasons.
We've had 'poverty' under Govts of all descriptions. Employment and jobs fluctuate, boom and bust as well. Labour would have tried to keep people in jobs but you can't artificially indefinitely; more real jobs have to be created. The fact is under Labour we would also have seen quite a few job losses as well as welfare reform, and moving people off of benefits, and as you say 'millions thrown ino poverty', although I wouldn't put it as high as that.

@Swatantra
This is surely a bad joke.

Acutally, that should have read, 'There is a progressive majority in this country, it's just by this country I don't mean England'.
That makes more sense.

@ Whig.

No that is your perception of the "economic mess" that Labour were supposed to have caused and your perception of it looks to be pretty much based on what the Tories want you to think about the economy left by labour and not what actually was left by labour. You should know, the same that the Tories actually know the figures support that labour managed the economy very well. I grant you where the Tories done good was actually being successful in pinning the blame for GLOBAL financial recession and the banking crisis that hurt many different countries on labour and people like you seem to not be able to tell the difference between global and national.
If I were Ed Miliband I would ask cameron and Osborne what they would have done differently to labour when the GLOBAL recession hit and the threat of a run on the pound was doing to the banks and the economy? As I recall Cameron and Osborne were behaving like a couple of rabbits caught in the headlamps, even their own party were doubting them. The truth is that they did not know what to do, after all they pledged to match Labour's spending plans pound for pound. Osborne also said that his preferred economy was the "Celtic tiger" and look what happened to that, I wonder did Osborne say this before or after he made his visit to Eire to learn how about how wonderfully well they were running their economy, if only our (then labour government) would be brave enough to do the same, as I recall Osborne said he was in Eire to "look, listen and learn", all I can say is good job he was not in power at the time or goodness knows where we would be now!

Labour actually handed this economy over with steady and strengthening growth, falling unemployment, rising consumer confidence and steadying housing market, this continued until labour's measures were stripped out and the Tories measures were installed and every since we have had the Tories measures the economy has flat lined and we have gone into reverse, in actual fact in Q 4 the economy contracted by 0.5% and in Q1 in REAL terms the economy did not grow, taking into consideration the contraction, it only just made up the fall back but in real terms this means that the economy actually probably contracted by about 0.25%, this country is on the edge of a double dip recession, listen to what Mervyn King said this morning, we are in dire trouble and the cuts have hardly hit yet. The Tories cannot blame labour for this, this is their very own mess. Sooner people realise that labour had no choice but to do what they did in the face of GLOBAL economic and financial adversity, the more people will be understanding what is actually happening in the economy and we can get rid of Osborne BEFORE he crashes us head on an causes an unmitigated and totally unnecessary economic mess. if people do not stop with this nonsense of blaming labour for what happened in the world, we will make the same mistakes again and the next banking crisis is much nearer than you may think. What then? Osborne and Cameron said they would allow the banks to fail, will they under their watch?

Very well said Gracie - this needs saying time and time again - every time the Tories and their running dogs trot out that simplistic mantra. 'Labour got us into this mess.' Bankers caused our currently economic ills and whatever else bankers may be - they sure aint Labour - put the blame where it belongs and get them to stump up for what they have cost us to save their greedy necks. Do you suppose the Tories ever would? Ha!

Good stuff from Nick.

Many people lack the intellectual capacity, or simply don't want to understand liberalism in that it transcends the artificial left-right divide. People who try to stuff liberalism into an artificial pigeonhole are either lazy, limited or have an agenda.

I get sick of hearing the tired line 'The mess that Labour left'.
It is a Tory trick. If you tell the people something often enough, they will believe it, doesn't have to be true.
But as Gracie so rightly says, under Labour in May 2010, the economy was strong and it is the Tory-led coalition who are making a mess and that's the truth!

ang - you're sick of hearing it because the truth hurts.

Lou - I don't agree with a single word of Gracie's comments and think them wrong.

On the economy, the Coalition does not have a mandate for the speed and depth of the cuts. Both Labour and the Lib Dems offered a slower more measured approach. The problem for the Lib Dems is that, now the economy is flatlining as Cable said it would, they cannot acknowledge that they were right in 2010, because agreeing to the Tory deficit plan was one of the concessions they made in exchange for AV referendum. The excuse that they suddenly discovered Greece, just does not wash.

On the NHS, the Lib Dems helped the bill get through its second reading, thus further reducing their credibility. I watched PMQ today and thought Ed Miliband did very well. The best bit was the unscripted response to Cameron's boast that the doctors backed his reforms. Ed congratulated Cameron on getting 40 or so, doctors (I can't remember the exact number) to write to the Telegraph in favour of the reforms, but reminded him how many doctors the BMA, which is against the reforms, represent.

We have also been told in a very patronising manner that we, the electorate, just do not realise that 75% of the Lib Dems policies are actually in the Coalition agreement. We do. That is what the local election results show.

@ Whig, there you see you state that Brown engineered popularity with borrowed money, yet offer no statistics that prove what you are saying. The simple truth is that the labour government for most of their term got government borrowing down and also finished paying off the debt to the US remaining from WW2.

You talk about "borrowing" as if it is a bad thing, when the truth is that all governments of free economies borrow money, if you are saying this is wrong then you are actually siding with those that think capitalism is wrong full stop. Did you not listen to Mervyn King today? He has said that Osborne will have to borrow MORE money than labour, in fact when labour went out of office their projected 'government' borrowing f was actually £42 BILLION LESS, now where has that gone? That is gone for the simple reason that growth has stalled, flat-lined and is having to be revised down again, why? As a direct result of this government's insane austerity measures, cutting too fast, too deep, they are risking putting this economy back into recession. Now you can argue all you like, this is the truth, according to the BoE and the OBR. The truth is simple, in 1997 public services were in a terminal condition, if they had not been allowed to decay over the 19 years of Tory rule and had received adequate investment in progress and technology and buildings, then come 1997 and beyond, billions of pounds would not have had to be raised to correct the rot and social decay, in the NHS, education, transport, welfare and in our towns and cities. the truth is that the Tories would like the fact that they caused the decay in this country between 1979 and 1997 to be wiped out, they would also like "Black Wednesday" to be erased from our minds when they were throwing billions of pounds at the ERM. They would like us to forget that we suffered soaring inflation and interest rates running at 15.9% for over one year, which resulted in millions losing their jobs, bankruptcies, companies going bust, thousands losing their homes, people even being imprisoned because they could not pay their poll tax. A true reflection of what labour did for this country over 13 years in terms of building 120 brand news hospitals, providing hundreds of thousands more doctors, nurses and teachers, reducing w hospital waiting lists from 2 and 3 years in some cases to 6/8 week waits, reducing waiting times for put patient appointments, reducing waiting times in A&Es all over the country. Providing new schools and refurbished schools, Sure Start and nursery education for every single 4 year old, urban regeneration, drug rehabilitation centres,increasing police numbers and reducing crime by 47%, providing the elderly with winter fuel allowances and pensioner credits, making work pay by providing families with working family tax credits, reducing unemployment to around the one million mark. From the parlous state this country was in when labour took over in 1997 to when they left it in 2010, it was vastly unrecognisable. The awful truth is that we are now hurtling backwards to those times, every good thing the labour government has done is being undone, in a few years time, if by some miracle this government succeed in getting the deficit down (and I seriously doubt they will) then where will we be as a country? What kind of country will we be living in again? Another truly "broken" society with the guts torn out of our social fabric, exactly what the Tories did in the past, only this time much worse, no libraries, no leisure centres, a privatised health service with poor hospitals for those that cannot afford private health care, decaying sink estates, no buildings, no regeneration, huge hospital waiting lists (already increasing), no Sure Start centres, decaying school buildings while the privileged get their children into semi privatised schools paid for by the state.
It just goes on and on, still you can stick your head in the sand if you want to, just do not keep blaming labour for what was a GLOBAL financial recession and International banking crisis and when this country is the pits to live in once again, blame the "wonderful" Tory government, because it will all be down to them and their ideological cuts, the Tories who are just using the deficit as a means to reduce and get rid of our public services and the NHS, something they have always wanted to do and with people like you around Whig, they may just succeed this time.

‎"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." George Bernard Shaw. At whig incase you dont know money is debt. Otherwise known as a promisary note. Our current prediciment is the inevitable result of free market globalisation. The current colection of crooks are just resetting the clock so there benifactors can loot the economy again.

the debt that we have is mostly the result of the financial crash cost of bailing out the banks the fall in tax revenue etc.Labour did borrow to spend thats true but it was a relativly small amount in relation to gdp and easily servicable. Im not here to defend the economic policy of the labour party however apart from the global financial crisis the uk fiscally is in a similar shape to when labour arrived with vastly improved public services. Criticise their decisons on selling gold and whether they got value for money or not by dont lie about what the tory agenda is whic is the whole sale destruction of the pulic sector

Benjamin Rae - you left out the words "by governments" in your selective quote from my post. Governments can not generate more revenue from their spending than the cost of borrowing the money. Governments should not borrow money - they should either raise taxes or cut spending. Borrowed money has to be paid back with interest - it makes no sense. Why can't you understand that borrowed money has to be paid back ? Furthermore because of debt interest, that costs more.

Clegg really is vile, isn't he? I mean fingers down the throat appalling. In any 'normal' social setting he would be disgraced, as would his oppo Laws, yet here in British politics they are not only taking seriously and as if they had integrity, but are actually in power...what a shame...

Seriously Whig, if you can't see how utterly wrong that statement is it's impossible to have proper debate with you.