Nick Clegg throws leadership into doubt as Lib Dem vote collapses

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/08/lib-dems-bad-night-share-of-vote-plummets-election

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Nick Clegg threw his leadership of the Liberal Democrats into doubt after he said the general election result had “profound implications for the country” as well as his party after a collapse in support.

Clegg managed to retain his seat and hold off the Labour challenger Oliver Coppard, with a majority reduced from 15,000 to about 2,000. In his acceptance speech, which was badly heckled by members of rival parties, he acknowledged that it had been a punishing election for the Lib Dems.

He said: “I will be seeking to make further remarks about the implications of this election both for the country and for the party that I lead and my position in the Liberal Democrats when I make remarks to my colleagues later this morning when I return to Westminster.”

The party maintained throughout the campaign that it would do better than the polls predicted, with Clegg claiming it was set to be the “surprise story”.

However, as the results came in showing the Lib Dem share of the vote imploding, a party spokesperson told journalists gathered at Clegg’s constituency count in Sheffield: “I’m not going to pretend that the Liberal Democrats are going to have anything other than a bad night.”

Lib Dem seats fell throughout the night. Vince Cable, the business secretary and former acting party leader, lost Twickenham, which he had held since 1997, to his Conservative opponent Tania Mathias.

Cabinet minister Ed Davey, the energy and climate change secretary, lost his seat of Kingston and Surbiton to the Conservative party candidate, James Berry, by just under 3,000 votes. The justice minister, Simon Hughes, lost his seat of 32 years, Bermondsey and Old Southwark, to Labour, as did the Home Office minister, Lynne Featherstone, in Hornsey and Wood Green.

In another blow to the Lib Dems, the former party leader Charles Kennedy lost his Ross, Skye and Lochaber seat to the Scottish National party.

The chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, looked set to be the highest ranking government minister to fall, with his constituency of Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey going to his SNP opponent, Drew Hendry.

With the Lib Dems likely to have their worst election night since the party was formed in 1988, Clegg’s future as leader was being questioned, with some speculating that he would resign imminently.

Speaking at the count in Sheffield’s English Institute of Sport, Paul Scriven, one of Clegg’s closest allies and the former Lib Dem leader of Sheffield city council, refused to speculate on his position, saying he thought the exit poll looked “completely rogue”. “I don’t think it is going to be that result,” he said. “So we’re hypothesising.”

The party at first rejected the TV exit poll which predicted it would face huge losses and retain only 10 of its 56 seats, saying it did not correspond to information the Lib Dems had gathered from activists. However, as the results gathered pace, the mood worsened.

Later party sources indicated that figure could be optimistic on a “devastating” night. A source said: “The exit poll is accurate. It may be even worse than that.”

A party spokesperson said the exit poll was “at the lower end” of what it had expected and the SNP had done ­“blindingly” in Scotland.

They said: “Voters have gone to them from the Lib Dems and Labour and the fear factor that the Conservatives have driven in England of the SNP holding the balance of power has clearly driven voters towards them, at the expense of the Lib Dems and arguably more dramatically Labour.”

The party’s yellow battle bus toured the country six days a week for the duration of the six-week campaign, culminating with a 40-hour journey from Land’s End to John O’Groats, both of which were in Liberal Democrat-held seats. The visits provided opportunities for Clegg to repeat the line, central to the party’s pitch to voters, that it would be a moderating force in a coalition with Labour or the Conservatives.

In the weeks running up to polling day, the Lib Dems were consistently critical of constituency polling from Lord Ashcroft, which did not mention the name of the local candidate in its questioning, something the Lib Dems said disadvantaged them. They said their own private polling showed an average nine-point boost when the candidate was named and boasted that many of their MPs had strong reputations at local level.

Ashcroft polled Clegg’s constituency, Sheffield Hallam, twice since March, both times placing him behind his Labour rival, Oliver Coppard. Each time Clegg dismissed the results, saying the party’s own polling had him well ahead.

“Just call me old-fashioned, but if you are going to try to work out how people are going to vote, ask them the question they are actually going to be asked on polling day”, he said in response to a poll on 29 April, which had him one point behind Coppard.

A poll conducted by the Guardian and ICM on Monday, which named the candidates, showed the Lib Dem leader seven points ahead of Coppard and suggested that a significant number of natural Conservative voters had decided to vote for the Lib Dems to keep Labour out.

The party openly admitted it was running a largely defensive campaign, focusing its attentions on about 30 of its seats that private polling suggested it could hold, and a handful of seats (including Oxford West and Abingdon, Maidstone, Montgomeryshire and Watford) it thought it could “pinch back”.

In the final days of the campaign, a senior Lib Dem source said the party had shifted its attentions to the 10 to 15 seats it thought it could still influence.