Alexander Smith: Only a miracle can save Nick Clegg, the leader who wasted the opportunity of a lifetime

On this day last year, voters across the UK woke up to the first hung Parliament since the 1970s. With the Conservatives failing to win an outright majority, the Liberal Democrats emerged holding the balance of power.

In the fraught days that followed, the unlikely figure of Nick Clegg became kingmaker. Then, what many had found unimaginable before the election became reality: he struck a deal with David Cameron and Liberal Democrats entered a coalition Government with the Conservatives.

And the price for Liberal Democrat support? Almost 20 Ministerial posts – including Deputy PM for Clegg – and the promise of a referendum to change the electoral system.

For a time, Clegg’s decision looked like a shrewd political move. Historically, Liberal Democrats have almost always won fewer seats in first past the post elections than their percentage share of the overall vote would have delivered under a more proportional system.

But how could they negotiate for a fairer alternative when the two main political parties – long time beneficiaries of first past the post – remain so hostile to proportional representation?

Dealing with the Conservatives was always going to be risky.

For years, the Liberal Democrat electoral base has had a schizophrenic quality. Many activists – in the Celtic fringe, rural areas and elsewhere – are holdouts from the old Liberal Party; their hostility to Labour politicians remains more palpable than their dislike of the Tories.

But other Lib Dem supporters are centre-Left voters, many having deserted the Labour Party during its years of rightward drift under Tony Blair. These voters were often attracted to progressive Liberal Democrat policies on education, immigration and public services.

As Clegg must have known, such voters started deserting his party within days of the 2010 election.

But Clegg’s gamble was calculated: he could afford to lose a significant number of voters as long as he could move the country to a more proportional voting system. Indeed, under the Alternative Vote, several Liberal Democrat strategists hoped they could return the same number of MPs with about half their vote in 2010.

As the dust begins to settle on the local council elections – which took place alongside a nationwide referendum on adopting the Alternative Vote in future Westminster elections – it would now seem that Nick Clegg’s gamble was a reckless mistake.

His party took a savage beating in the local elections and it appears that huge swathes of northern Britain, much of which is bearing the brunt of the coalition Government’s savage public spending cuts, have become a no-go zone for the Liberal Democrats.

In Clegg’s own Sheffield Hallam constituency, 80 per cent of his local councillors lost their seats. This pattern was repeated elsewhere in Yorkshire and northern England. A teenager even defeated a Lib Dem stalwart in Liverpool, while the party’s council leader in Hull lost his seat.

Further north, meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats were routed in the Scottish Parliament elections as their supporters deserted for the SNP, handing the Nationalists an historic victory that will almost certainly pave the way for a referendum on Scottish independence.

Lord Ashdown, one of Clegg’s more illustrious predecessors, is half-right when he says that the Liberal Democrats – once the party of protest – became the focus of anti-Government anger in northern Britain partly because there was no Tory to kick. But with many now feeling the pain of the Government’s budget cuts, the Liberal Democrat obsession with the Alternative Vote referendum these last few weeks ended up looking like a perverse priority.

For Clegg, it got worse when his Conservative colleagues personalised the campaign against the Alternative Vote, launching vicious attacks on him and effectively turning the referendum into a vote of confidence on the Liberal Democrats in Government. With friends like the Conservatives, the embattled Deputy PM must now be wondering whether he really needs enemies.

It is difficult to see how Clegg might salvage his party’s electoral prospects. Wed to the Tories for the duration of this Parliament, his MPs now seem destined to play out their unfolding political tragedy to the bitter end. Having alienated much of their electoral base, there is little incentive for them to break ranks and endanger the Government. A snap election would almost certainly destroy them.

There are still important ideological battles to be fought between the coalition parties, which could provide Liberal Democrats with an opportunity to rebuild trust amongst some of their voters.

But irreparable damage to the Liberal Democrat “brand” has now been done. Tough talk from Lord Ashdown, Simon Hughes and other senior Liberal Democrats about reasserting themselves on issues like banking reform and immigration will do little to improve their long-term electoral prospects.

For example, why would university students – hundreds of thousands of whom voted Lib Dem last year – give Clegg a second chance after he reneged on his commitment to free education and supported higher tuition fees and the virtual privatisation of English universities? Were the Liberal Democrats doomed the moment they sold their support to the Conservatives? It is possible that they could have avoided this nightmare if they had been much bolder in Government, blocking the Tory Party’s ideologically-driven proposals on spending cuts, the NHS and University funding. This would have protected core Liberal Democrat constituencies and provided Clegg with a powerful narrative about the value of being in coalition Government.

That they have not been seen to hold their Conservative colleagues sufficiently in check suggests that Liberal Democrats were ill-prepared for the challenges and rigours of coalition politics.

As it becomes increasingly clear that they have squandered the best opportunity they have had in over 50 years to affect fundamental change to British politics, important questions will be raised about Clegg’s political judgment and leadership.

In the long history of the Lib Dems and the old Liberal Party that predated them, another political opportunity such as that which confronted Clegg following the 2010 election might not come again for another half-century.

In the meantime, the question is whether Clegg, himself, can still – from a position of such weakness – honour the five-year coalition agreement that he embraced 12 long months ago? If he can, it will take a political miracle on his part – and that of his embattled party.

Dr Alexander Smith is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Huddersfield.