Tuesday 6 July 2010

Sympathy for Little Nicky II

No, not Nick Griffin. Nick Clegg. Though I have to admit, not for the real Nick Clegg. He made his bed, he can lie on it. But for the Nick Clegg portrayed by the Guardian's cartoonist, Steve Bell (1), in this lovely pastiche of Bubbles, painted by John Everett Millais:



That Little Nicky looks so sweetly innocent and unsuspecting, imagining his bubble will last forever. It breaks my heart.

I'm sure the real Nick Clegg - the real one - will have taken a keen interest in the post-election polls. And it is interesting - if you are me - to see how the they have changed over the last 2 months.

UK Polling Report lists all recognized polls (2). You Gov has been doing a slew of them, and I've come to regard them as fairly reliable. Even though they didn't predict the collapse of Lib Dem support on polling day, they were (I think) the only poll that showed a wobble in the run up to polling day.

What the current polls are showing is the Tories at about 42%, Labour resurgent at 36%, and the Lib Dems down at a terminal 15% - lower than they polled in the late 80s and 90s consolidation period under Ashdown, when they won about 20 seats, and the sort of numbers that may mean them reduced to that sort of level of representation, if the AV referendum goes against them.

If they do lose that referendum, then Nick Clegg may have destroyed his own party - the drop in Lib Dem support matches the rise in Labour's, and pushes the Lib Dems down to the sort of level of support where they'll struggle to hold the balance of power in future FPTP parliaments.

Still, I'm sure the Tories will have him.
1 - "A portrait of Nick Clegg, after Millais," by Steve Bell. Published in The Guardian, 5th of July, 2010. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2010/jul/06/nickclegg-liberal-conservative-coalition)
2 - UK Polling Report blog, http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/.

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