Nick Clegg: The Man With No Choice But To Go
Nick Clegg was the leader with all the choices in 2010, by 2015 he had only one - to resign. Anushka Asthana looks at his career.
Friday 8 May 2015 15:10, UK
Nick Clegg could have been a Conservative.
There were even rumours he joined the party's student association at Cambridge University in the 1980s (although he claims no memory of it).
An early boss at the EU Commission - the former Tory Home Secretary Leon Brittan - then tried to persuade him to sign up.
But it wasn't to be. Mr Clegg was hoping to become a different breed of politician.
In 1999 he was elected as a Member of the European Parliament for the Liberal Democrats - and it has been a roller-coaster ride ever since.
First the rise: from MEP to MP (for Sheffield Hallam) to party leader and then the dizzy heights of so-called Cleggmania.
In 2010 the Lib Dem leader was riding high. His party was already on track to win a huge number of extra votes when he was invited to take part in three television debates leading up to the election.
And then came his performances - the new pretender bursting into the homes of millions of Britons just weeks before the election.
The debates didn't actually change the Lib Dems' end position. They did boost their overall votes by 1m compared to 2005 but they were on track to do that anyway, and our parliamentary system actually landed them with slightly fewer - 57 - seats.
Perhaps that apparent unfairness led to the bizarre spectacle of Mr Clegg addressing a massive, cheering crowd in London's Smith Square with a loudhailer as they chanted in favour of electoral reform.
Amid it all Mr Clegg found himself as a Westminster kingmaker. Urgent talks with Conservatives hammered out a Coalition deal that placed Lib Dems in Government for five years - and made him Deputy Prime Minister.
How they smiled in the Rose Garden as he and David Cameron announced the final result. The giggled response to the journalist asking about the time the Tory leader was asked his favourite joke and replied "Nick Clegg" may still cause embarrassment.
But this was the high point. The decision to do a deal with the Tories, who many 2010 Lib Dem voters saw as the enemy, had a toxic result - on the party and its leader.
A further decision not to abstain over the issue of raising tuition fees - but instead embrace and argue in favour of the policy - was to cause further damage.
This was about trust and integrity.
The past returned to haunt the party leader: filmed clips promising to vote against any rise in fees, and saying he was the man who could bring an end to the "broken promises" of politicians that littered Westminster.
Mr Clegg became a lightning rod for Lib Dem dissatisfaction - with effigies of him strung up or pictures stamped on at mass protests.
It was a slump from which he was not able to recover. His party dug in during this election but in the end the result was catastrophic.
Big names fell - the former Business Secretary Vince Cable, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, the former Education Minister David Laws and former Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone.
In the end, the man with all the choices to make in 2010 had very little choice in 2015. He simply had to go.