In a country long dominated by the Conservative and Labor parties, Clegg's star turn in U.S.-style television debates elevated his typically also-ran Liberal Democrats into contenders last year. Even Colin Firth, star of "The King's Speech," jumped off the movie set and onto the campaign trail for the new prince of British politics.
Clegg emerged as the kingmaker of the May elections, striking a hard-fought coalition deal with the Conservatives that brought his party into government, albeit as junior partners, for the first time in almost a century.
Clegg, however, is now discovering the high price of success. Thousands of voters are deserting the party, with support for the Liberal Democrats falling from a high of 34 percent last April to a rock-bottom 9 percent last month. Even Firth is openly disavowing the Liberal Democrats. "I am without an affiliation now," he recently told reporters at the Dubai Film Festival.
After snowstorms engulfed Britain last month, Clegg ruefully proclaimed: "I am getting blamed for everything. I will be blamed for the weather."
The news is bad not only for Clegg. The Liberal Democrats' extraordinary decline marks the first real sign of weakness in Britain's coalition government, which the conservative prime minister, David Cameron, must hold together to serve out his five-year term.
Cameron appears so concerned about flagging support for the Liberal Democrats that he took the unusual step of offering warm words for the party's candidate in a special election next week, even though the Conservatives are fielding their own hopeful in the race.
The waning of Clegg, analysts say, stems from what many of his former backers call a series of bitter betrayals. None was more stinging than Clegg's decision to back the Conservatives in dramatically scaling back subsidies for university students, forcing an increase in tuition as part of the coalition's crusade to bust the mammoth British budget deficit.
It came only months after the "Lib Dems" had swept up young voters in an undercurrent of excitement during the campaign, promising that they would strongly oppose tuition increases. Going back on that pledge now has made Clegg the main target for thousands of young protesters who have taken to the streets of London in recent months to oppose the coalition's austerity measures.
Like Obama, Clegg was an inspirational, out-of-the-box candidate who energized a generation of young voters. Although the U.S. president's ratings have also fallen sharply, Clegg appears to be facing a far stronger backlash, especially among students.
"I supported the Lib Dems. I campaigned for them amongst my friends and handed out leaflets," said Rachel Sullivan, 20, an English literature major at Oxford who has taken part in the demonstrations. "But now I feel that I was championing a childish cause, a cause for people who were not honest about what they stood for. . . . There are many students who will never vote Lib Dem again."
Indeed, the Liberal Democrats, who run the spectrum from left-wing liberals to fiscally conservative libertarians, have emerged as what many here are calling "human shields" for the Conservatives. They are effectively taking most of the flak for the unpopular policies the government is advancing.
It could have severe consequences for Clegg, his party and potentially the coalition. Clegg's plummeting support is jeopardizing the chances of success for a measure seen as the main reason he entered into the coalition: a referendum on election reforms that would make it far easier for the Liberal Democrats to beat the dominant Conservative and Labor parties in future votes.
Under an agreement with the Conservatives, that referendum is set for May, at the same time as regional elections in which analysts are predicting significant setbacks for Liberal Democrats.
"The Liberal Democrats are finding themselves held accountable in a way they were never held accountable before," said Andrew Russell, senior lecturer on politics at the University of Manchester. "The irony is that because they are being blamed for everything, they may now be set to lose the one chance in a generation to change the electoral system in Britain."
Liberal Democrat officials are divided over Clegg, a personable Cambridge graduate with a Spanish wife and Dutch-Russian roots. Some have criticized him for supporting the tuition increases and other measures, including the rise in the national sales tax that took effect this week. Still, no likely challenger has emerged within the party. But if the votes in May go decidedly against the Liberal Democrats, some analysts question whether Clegg may be forced to reconsider whether the price of power is too high to remain in the coalition.
Clegg and his aides, however, reject any suggestion that they would throw in the towel.
To bolster the image of Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, the government is reportedly preparing to let him announce a long-awaited overhaul of the House of Lords, paving the way for 80 percent of the lawmakers in Britain's unelected upper house to be voted in by the public. That, some say, could help reposition Clegg as the agent of change he has professed to be."Our leadership made a fundamental error" by supporting higher tuition, said Adrian Saunders, a Liberal Democrat lawmaker. "But it is not too late to get the message out that we can and are doing good in government."
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