Chapter 3 addresses whether the Liberal Democrats' collapse in support after the party entered coalition government with the Conservatives was inevitable. Throughout, it critically evaluates the Conservative–Liberal Democrat government through the lens of cross-national research on coalition-building. As the junior partner, the party always faced an uphill task to get credit; however, the chapter illustrates how the majority of the Liberal Democrats' problems stemmed from their own misjudgements, errors and deficiencies. The chapter details how the Liberal Democrats 'got the coalition wrong' from the outset, including the initial agreement and assignment of portfolios, through to presenting the coalition, messaging and misreading the politics. It also explores how the Liberal Democrats' electoral prospects were further undermined by Clegg's misjudgements and campaign mistakes. The concluding section examines the final outcome and the immense scale of the electoral collapse. It details the legacy of coalition, which had become a millstone around the party's neck, and examines why the prospects of an immediate recovery looked slim.

Chapter 1 examines how the Liberal Democrats' political and electoral strategy worked in sync to tackle the entrenched structural obstacles of the party and electoral system head on. It details how the Liberal Democrats provided a viable alternative by abandoning their equidistance stance and simultaneously adopting high-profile policy positions and competent leadership, which allowed them to profit when their rivals floundered. With the removal of the equidistance shackles, we show how agency mattered. Policy distinctiveness on salient issues was presented through the personalised lens of the leader enhancing his popularity. Yet, the Liberal Democrats were not in complete control of their own destiny. Despite successfully presenting themselves as credible they were inextricably reliant on exploiting opponents' policy mistakes in order to weaken established voter attachments to the two main parties. The chapter also examines how the party successfully translated votes into seats through an electoral strategy that built credibility through intensive grassroots activism, precise targeting and tailored messaging. Through an examination of the 'Rennard strategy' we examine how building a local platform and one-off parliamentary by-elections were integral to establishing electoral credibility and achieving success at Westminster. The chapter also explores how the party adapted its electoral strategy to target Labour during the 2000s and build new coalitions of support. Lastly, it assesses the post-Rennard era and how the electoral strategy evolved in the run-up to the 2010 general election.

Chapter 4 explains the collapse in Liberal Democrat support during its period in coalition government. It examines how the legacy of coalition laid bare the political and electoral vulnerabilities which the party ignored in 2010. One goal of the chapter is to put to bed competing explanations for the party's electoral meltdown. It shows how entering coalition betrayed a significant part of its 2010 vote and how these voters left the party immediately and did not return. Within 12 months of the party entering coalition, the Liberal Democrats' voters had been reduced to a small number of enduring partisans. Policy u-turns and support for harsher austerity did not drive this mass exodus but reinforced the betrayal and rubber stamped the prospect of no return. The chapter shows how the Liberal Democrats, as the junior coalition partner, got little or no credit for positive government policy initiatives and how the decision to spread themselves thinly across government departments undermined their ability to carve out a distinct identity. The chapter exposes how the Liberal Democrats were ill-equipped electorally to cope with a backlash from voters and how their reliance on a volatile and unstable coalition of voters proved to be the party's Achilles' heel in 2015. Lastly, it examines how the coalition legacy and subsequent collapse exacerbated the perennial 'credibility gap' problem. Decades of hard work had been undone in a few years, with voters across the political spectrum seemingly less willing to lend the party their vote not only in 2015 but also in subsequent elections.

After previous chapters have detailed what happened to the Liberal Democrat vote after 2010 and why, Chapter 8 addresses the big picture – the changing geography of Liberal Democrat support. This chapter is divided into two sections. The first details the emergence of a new Liberal Democrat geography of support. It examines the party's growing north–south divide and how the Liberal Democrats have increasingly become a 'south of England' party. It also describes how the party's political travails in 2015 and 2017 exposed the Liberal Democrats' traditional 'Celtic fringe' strongholds, where historical Liberal support was hitherto already in decline. Evidence from 2019 suggests any revival looks slim. The second part of the chapter explores the changing socio-demographic composition of the Liberal Democrat vote before examining the impact of two seismic political shocks on the geography of Liberal Democrat support in Britain. It stresses how the post-referendum unionist–nationalist divide in Scotland and the fallout from Brexit exposed the underlying structural weaknesses in the party's support and, alongside the millstone of coalition and the legacy of austerity, neutered any prospect of electoral growth. The final section is more upbeat, focusing on the green shoots of recovery in specific types of Remain seats in 2019 and newer areas where local growth is evident. The focus turns to the classification and examination of the so-called 'Blue Wall' and whether it provides a viable route for electoral recovery or if the party needs to unite old and new geographies of support to achieve sustainable electoral growth.

The 2019 European Parliament (EP) election took place against the backdrop of the vote for Brexit and the failure of parliament to agree on a withdrawal agreement. Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party topped the poll and the pro-Remain Liberal Democrats, which called for a second referendum on EU membership, returned from electoral obscurity to take second place while other pro-Remain parties similarly performed well. In sharp contrast, the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, recorded their lowest combined vote share since they became the main representatives of the two-party system. In this article, we draw on aggregate-level data to explore what happened at the 2019 EP election in Great Britain. Our evidence suggests Labour suffered from a ‘pincer movement’, losing support in its mainly white, working-class ‘left behind’ heartlands but also in younger cosmopolitan areas where Labour had polled strongly at the 2017 general election. Support for the new Brexit Party increased more significantly in ‘left behind’ communities, which had given strong support to Leave at the 2016 referendum, suggesting that national populists capitalised on Labour’s woes. The Conservatives haemorrhaged support in affluent, older retirement areas but largely at the expense of the resurgent Liberal Democrats, with the latter surging in Remain areas and where the Conservatives are traditionally strong, though not in areas with younger electorates where the party made so much ground prior to the 2010-2015 coalition government. Lastly, turnout increased overall compared to 2014 but individuals living in Leave areas were less motivated to vote. Overall, our findings suggest that those living in Remain areas were more driven to express their discontent with the Brexit process and more inclined to support parties that offer a second referendum on Britain’s EU membership.

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This article: Confirms that e-participation is multi-dimensional with prior modes of participation emerging online. Shows that these online activities have mobilising effects and that this relationship appears to work largely in a step-wise or ‘spill-over’ manner. Demonstrates that accessing online news and information acts as a ‘gateway’ or first step into participation. Argues that the more active modes of online participation do not appear to exert any mobilising effects on other types of post-election engagement. Shows that the dynamics of Internet participation are more complex than the ‘one size fits all’ approach that dominates the current literature. In this study we test whether a range of online political activities undertaken during the campaign affect the propensity to engage in non-electoral types of online and offline political engagement subsequently. We develop three hypotheses accounting for this linkage based on a ‘spill-over’ logic about (1) the effort required for the action; (2) the type of activity undertaken (formal versus informal); and (3) the medium on which the action occurs (online or offline). We test our hypotheses with a pre/post-election panel dataset from the UK 2010 General Election. The results show that after controlling for prior political engagement, online information seeking during the campaign has a significant and positive effect on further engagement in ‘softer’ discussion modes of participation. The findings are seen to confirm that Internet-based political mobilisation works in a ‘step-wise’ manner whereby lower intensity activities spill-over to move individuals a little further up the participation ladder.

On the coalition negotiations in May 2010, William Hague is reported to have told his wife, Ffion: ‘I think I've just killed the Liberal Democrats.’1 The final agreement was signed off on 20 May 2010. It seems the fate of the Liberal Democrats might have been sealed. After barely one month in coalition, the party's poll rating had fallen by 8%. Three months on and three weeks before Lord Browne's report on Higher Education and Student Finance, it had more than halved to 11%. By the seven month anniversary of the coalition agreement, a YouGov poll in the Sun2 had the Liberal Democrats languishing at 8%. It was never to recover. The party's collapse was complete. Four and half years later it polled 8%, its worst UK- wide share of the vote for 45 years. Even on election night party grandees were in denial. In reaction to the BBC/ITN/SKY exit poll suggesting that the number of Liberal Democrat MPs will be reduced from 57 to 10, Lord Ashdown retorted: ‘I can tell you—that is wrong. If these exit polls are right, I'll publicly eat my hat’. The exit poll was wrong, but actually understated the Conservative march into Liberal Democrat territory. Only eight Liberal Democrats survived; the party's MPs, once described as the ‘cockroaches of UK politics’ by former Party President Tim Farron, proved to be far from resilient in face of a Labour onslaught and a brutal Conservative micro-targeting blitz. The morning after the night before, Nick Clegg resigned as leader having taken the party's representation in Westminster backwards at two successive General Elections. The fall from the heights of Cleggmania to meltdown is the focus of this analysis, which examines whether the Liberal Democrats' position was ever salvageable? Did the Liberal Democrats compound mistakes which made …

Results appear to be backing an exit poll for the 2015 UK election that predicted a better than expected performance for the Conservative Party. It suggested the Tories will win 316 seats – not far short to the 326 seats needed for a majority. Meanwhile, Labour has gone backwards, falling to a predicted 239 (down from 256); the SNP has made record gains in Scotland, winning 56 seats; and the Liberal Democrats are in freefall