The leader of the Liberal Democrats party, Nick Clegg, resigned from his post on Friday after his party, known as the Lib Dems, was almost wiped out.
On the brink of tears, Mr. Clegg said it was “the most crushing blow to the Liberal Democrats since our party was founded” as he addressed party members and the media in central London. It appears the Liberal Democrats have paid the price for going into coalition with the Conservatives and breaking a flagship promise to lower tuition fees.
Mr. Clegg, who served as Deputy Prime Minister for five years, warned in his emotional address that “fear and grievance have won, and liberalism has lost.” “It is more precious than ever and we must keep fighting for it,” he said. “It is easy to imagine there is no road back. There is. This is a very dark hour for our party but we cannot and will not allow decent liberal values to be extinguished overnight.”
In total, the party is down by 47 seats to eight MPs. A raft of senior party figures were lost from Parliament, including Vince Cable, the business secretary, Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, Steve Webb, the pensions minister, David Laws, an education minister, Lynne Featherstone, a Home Office minister, Norman Baker, a former Home Office minister, former leader Charles Kennedy, and Simon Hughes, the deputy leader.
This severely narrows the field of candidates to take over from Mr. Clegg, but the main contenders are likely to be Tim Farron, the former party president, Norman Lamb, a health minister, and potentially Alistair Carmichael, the Scottish secretary, who was the only of the party’s MPs to hold on in Scotland.
— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2015
