Clegg’s first year: Clegg on Clegg | Tall on Clegg | Land on Clegg | Littlewood on Clegg | Clegg on YouTube
As Nick Clegg reaches his first anniversary as Liberal Democrat leader there is much for him to reflect on, but not – at least yet – a great deal for him to celebrate.
Let’s start with the bad stuff. Then look at some areas of success. And end with some grounds for genuine optimism.
The principal bad news is the state of the party in the opinion polls. It’s as simple as that. There are, of course, staging posts of “real votes in real ballot boxes” between General Elections, but the best guide to the performance of a party – and its leader – remains the plethora of national opinion polls pumped out on a weekly basis.
There has been no obvious “Clegg effect” in the first year of his leadership. In fact, if anything, the party may have slipped backwards slightly over 2008. In broad terms, we are running at an average of around 15 – 16%, suggesting about a third of our supporters have deserted us since the last election. Some polls suggest we may have lost half our support. No poll I can find suggests we have increased it.
These are poor numbers. Not necessarily catastrophic, but definitely bad. Whatever the public “spin”, the party’s inner circle must not kid themselves that these figures are anything better than that.
The electoral problem is, of course, exacerbated by Britain’s insane electoral system. If we do lose a third of our vote, we will probably lose many more than a third of our seats. If we lose half of it, we will lose more than half of our MPs. The line between a fairly good outcome in Parliamentary seats and a disastrous one is a very thin line indeed. It feels like we are walking that line.
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