Chris Huhne's memory seems to inhabit a different space-time continuum from mine ....

[non sociopath skin]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/lib-dem-poll-rating-halves-to-12-per-cent-2041219.html

... or can anyone else remember when the Liberals' poll rating was just "an asterisk"?

Not convinced that his prophecy is likely to be any more accurate.

The Skin

[T_i_B]

1. It's not his memory that is a concern...

It's more his rose-tinted view of how things will pan out for them in the future.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Chris Huhne is whistling to keep up his spirits

He knows that he would lose his seat even with a relatively small swing against the LibDems, let alone the sort of swing that will happen if this mess continues. Clegg is leading his party like the captain of the Titanic, with the Tories playing the role of iceberg.

If the current decline continues, they will reach a point when, even if they get the PR for which they agreed to the coalition, they will *still* get fewer seats than if they'd never entered the coalition.

As regards Liberal polling having been just an asterisk: there were indeed times in the 1950s when they were polling under 3%, though I doubt that Huhne literally remembers back that far.

[non sociopath skin]

3. He won't. I have four years on him and don't remember that.

Under Grimond - the first Lib leader in my memory - the Libs were doing better than that and were certainly seen as players.

The Skin

[T_i_B]

4. Well, if they get PR...

...then even if their support collapses at the next election they will still have a good chance of holding the balance of power, and that appears to be all the Lib Dems really want.

It's a shame that what has been a party with a wide range of priorities has allowed itself to become virtually a single issue party playing second fiddle to the Tories.

[non sociopath skin]

5. You begin to wonder how much appeal that can have with voters ...

... "Vote for the Party that's Proud To Be Everyone's Second Choice".

The Skin

[Nihil]

8. Ouch.

> "Vote for the Party that's Proud To Be Everyone's Second Choice"

Harsh but fair.

[fedsron2us]

7. I dont think they will get PR

Clegg's very act of joining a coalition with a Tory government determined to force through spending cuts that will crucify the poor is going to be the factor which kills it. Many people will think that if the current set up is the best that PR has to offer then we may as well stick with first past the post. In addition there are other reforms of the voting system such as making proportion of the House Of Commons come up for re-election every two years like local Councillors which might have a far better effect on restraining an overweening Prime Minister than the rather ropey AV proposals. The Lib Dems will gain nothing and then get annihilated at the next election which is what the Tories have been planning all along.

[miscsoc]

6. They seem to be doing everything possible to bring back those old glory days.

[Ken Burch]

12. Maybe if they had the guy with the Jeremy Thorpe mask from the Monty Python episode come back

it might help them.

Can't think of anything else that would.

Nick Clegg is going to go down in history as the man who caused the Second Strange Death of Liberal England(and Britain).

[Ken Burch]

9. Perhaps not an asterisk, but in 1970

They were reduced to a pathetic six seats, and just over 7% of the vote.

They might never have recovered if only Labour had done the sensible thing and dumped Harold Wilson after the 1970 defeat, thus allowing Jeremy Thorpe to paint the next campaign as a race between TWO failed leaders(Wilson and Edward Heath)with himself and the Liberals as a breath of fresh air.

[LeftishBrit]

10. One of my early political memories...

is of the February 1974 General Election, which was the only other election since the war that has resulted in a hung parliament. I remember that Ted Heath tried to get Thorpe and the Liberals to go into coalition with the Tories, but they wouldn't. Harold Wilson became PM in charge of a Labour minority government and called an election, which he won with a narrow, but absolute, majority in 1974. After a few years, and some by-elections, the same government, now headed by Callaghan, no longer had an absolute majority, and the Liberals propped it up by an informal 'Lib-Lab pact'.

[Ken Burch]

11. Which, of course, was how the first Labour government came to power, in 1924

n/t.