UK Lib Dems in chaos over Nick Clegg’s leadership

Four years is a lifetime in politics as Nick Clegg is finding out. He has gone from the Liberal Democrat’s golden boy at the 2010 elections to a figure blamed by grassroots activists for driving the party’s popularity into the ground.
Senior Lib Dem figure – and long-time critics of Clegg- Lord Oakeshott resigned from the party after it was revealed he commissioned a poll which showed the Lib Dems would do better under another leader. In another poll, it was suggested Clegg was in danger of losing his own parliamentary seat at the 2015 election. Under nick clegg’s leadership the liberal democrats have enjoyed their first real brush with Westminster power and influence in the modern political era but at what cost? The controversial move to prop up the Tories in the coalition government may have signaled the beginning of the end for the lib dems in their present guise and it may have ushered in the era of nick clegg’s political death. For one of the chief architects of the Coalition, Clegg has less than a year to convince not just the British electorate, but his own party members, of his fitness to lead.