The biggest threat to the coalition

ollie

I'm convinced more than ever that the coalition cannot last much longer. Hague's resignation would kill it stone dead. With more revelations on their way in the Sunday papers, Hague appears to have been caught with his...errr,,, pants down.

Richard of York

The long holiday has really got the troops worried they have had to face their electorate and the feed-back has not been good.
It will take a strong leader to keep the Liberals together and Clegg is not that man.
Hard to see any Lib Dem that fits the bill.

Neutral Corner

The LibDem slump in the polls reflects only the loss of those using the party as a home for their protest vote. They were never true LibDem suppporters.

The alternative - which is far more damning - is that those erstwhile LibDem supporters preferred the morally righteous artificiality of opposition to the awkward complexities of government. Who in their right mind would choose the impotence of minority party politics over the limited power and influence of coalition?

NickW

Teachers, social workers, local authority workers, NHS staff all concentrate their loyalties on the Lib Dems. The BBC, The Guardian, and the Lib Dems are inseparable.

Falling support is inevitable; but here is the question; Those who work in public services work to make a profit as individuals; they do not work for nothing as a public service; so why all the grief about financial efficiency in public services?

Holly

What difference would it make if he did resign?
Labour will STILL be in opposition.
DC would put someone else in.
It is NOT the end of the coalition.
Did it all fall apart when Laws went?
NO it didn't.
They all tried the 'naive','bad judgement'
angle with Osborne,if I remember.
Old habits die hard I suppose.

Holly

Councellors eh?
The coalition is sure to disintegrate now some councillors have gone.
Do not replace them & save us a wad of money
in the long term.

charles hercock

11% means nothing at this stage
Clegg's charisma will win through
Watch the shambles of the 5 labour also rans and smile

Olaf Rye

This is not a surprise at all, for the LibDems are generally in favour of taxation and spending and are economically clueless. Listening to the sophistry and stupidity from the Labour leadership candidates yesterday merely underscored that they have no idea of the mess that they are responsible for and believe that the deficit and debt are unimportant matters. They claim that the cuts are more severe than they should be, driven by ideologically interests, but none of them seem to appreciate that they are necessary for Britain to have any financial credibility amongst those financing our public debt. It is a pity that the parlous state of the public finances, and the radical spending cuts required to even keep us afloat, has not been argued for with more rigour by the coalition. If you heard Diane Abbot going on about public spending being a multiplier, and Ed Balls talking about a slow reduction in the deficit, you realise just how profoundly stupid these people are.

Snowman

Neutral Corner @ 8.07:

you right, I reckon. The true members of the confused party have got used to barking for so long they prefer it from biting and taking the blame for it, or getting bitten and finding cures for the wounds.

to make a deal with them made sense for the boy, not for the Tories.

normanc

The Lib Dems need to take some advice from President Clinton - it's the economy, stupid.

Watch how that is doing, those are the numbers that matter.

TrevorsDen

Revelations about what?

Were you jerking off when you wrote that? Sounds quite a fantasy anyway.

davidk

The Libs-Dems themselves are a marriage of convenience - they will split: Liberal from Social Democratic wings before too long. You can bet someone like Hughes or Kennedy believe they have a date with destiny.

TGF UKIP

The idiocy and Dave-driven desperation that has always been this coalition is becoming ever clearer as it unravels.

The trap is that as the LibDems grow ever more disenchanted, Dave has nothing left to give them so much did he initially concede and so pissed off is so much of the Tory Party over the level of those concessions.

Lucky, lucky whichever Miliband.

TrevorsDen

A mid month poll put the LDs on 18.

Recent YouGov has em on 13.

UKPR has rolling average of 14.

ollie

trevorsden, don't blame me for what the reports say about the sunday papers. they say there are more revelations - it's not my fault, though.

Hague's finished.

TrevorsDen

A sensible point Mr davidk.

'Liberals' have had a long history of coalitions with the Conservatives.

SDP/Liberal is a party with a split personality. The SDP are basically socialists to me. Liberals - well you tell me what they are but David laws does not strike me as a socialist.

Tony Makara

Life is all about trade-offs and the LibDems traded at least the next two elections for a once in a lifetime opportunity to play Ministerial politics.

Excepting that the LibDem influence on policy is so scant as to be pointless. Nick Clegg has been out manoeuvred at every juncture by the Conservatives who have been light years ahead of the LibDems in making the Coalition work to their advantage.

The fact that every protest vote now becomes a Labour vote, by default, is the fault of the LibDems.

After its woeful record in office Labour does not deserve such a free-ride.

A crushing defeat for the LibDems may well see them implode entirely, as its two factions are forced to rethink the future.

AG

TrevorsDen, we don't usually use expressions such as "jerking off" which is vulgar slang chiefly N. American for masturbate on this site and I wouldn't like to go down the route where every comment has to have a sexual tone. I find the comments on the GF website are so filthy that they amount to soft porn and maybe it's because the author of that blog is enveloped in this stuff that he sees everything through a haze of sexual innuendo which colours his thinking.
I wholeheartedly approve of freedom of speech but something is lost if it comes out littered with offensive sexual words.

TrevorsDen

If Hague is finished then so is politics and so is the country.

Your attitude to this if I may say stinks.
Since what has Hague done? Absolutely nothing.
Blair becomes PM - what's his next move? To install his former university girlfriend as his personal assistant.

So whats the big deal - please tell me before you fan the flames higher.

alexsandr

Lib dem support melting?

Time for a snap GE I feel. Good time with labour renting asunder with their leadership election.

Get a proper tory government then!

Ian Stewart

Interesting to see that in a small way what Charlie kennedy said in his Observer article may be coming to pass.
This is just a small taste of what is to come for the centre party I fear.
The trouble for the Coalition is the pressure this puts on LD MPs to shift leftwards, and the pressure that this will put on Cameron.

Bill Brinsmead

Those of you living south of Watford should know that the 3 are councillors in Runcorn which, although it might have a Cheshire post code, is really part of Merseyside. These guys realise that, as in Liverpool, their main opponents are Labour. It is simple positioning ahead of next year's local elections.

Paddy

A 'threat to the coalition'.

You must be joking.

After the last occupants of No 10 everything must be very civilised and I have no doubt at all that the coalition will be able to sort out any difficulties - so long as you journos stop trying to find fault.

And dear James please check your spelling and don't forget to wash round your ears.