I don't believe the Lib Dems have 'won' either - apologies for length....

So Clegg is deputy leader - a role described accurately by Wiki as

"The office of the Deputy Prime Minister is not a permanent position. It exists only at the discretion of the Prime Minister.

The office is normally considered as a honorific title.

Unlike analogous offices in some other nations, including the United States Vice Presidency, a British Deputy Prime Minister possesses no special powers above those of his or her ministry.
He or she does not assume the duties and powers of the Prime Minister in the latter's absence or illness, such as the powers to seek a dissolution of parliament, appoint peers or brief the sovereign.
He does not automatically succeed the Prime Minister, should the latter be incapacitated or resign from the leadership of his or her political party"


Charles Kennedy told a fringe event at the Lib Dems' annual conference last year that the Tories' hostility to the European Union was "one of several straws that would break any camel's back".
"I just don't see how we could make common ground with a Cameron-Hague administration on the European issue," he said. "I mean pigs would fly."

At the same time when a hung parliament looked a distinct possibility a poll for the BBC revealed that fewer than one in five Lib Dem activists said that they would want to see Nick Clegg team up with the Conservatives in the event of a hung parliament after the next general election


And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?
Mark 8.36


Julian Glover English journalist and partner of former Conservative politician Matthew Parris sums up one view….

"Politics is about the pursuit of power"

"The onus is on Liberal Democrats. . They are close to it. They must take it."

He acknowledges that
"Clegg might have to accept that some Lib Dems, finding their party in bed with the Tories, would desert to Labour"
But argues that
"…the purifying departure of social democrats from a liberal party would be no bad thing"


From 1979 to 1988 David Alton (now a peer) was a Liberal MP and a Liberal Democrat MP until 1997; he served at various times as spokesman on the Environment, Home Affairs, Northern Ireland and as Chief Whip

He observes….

"First, the unedifying procrastination of the past few days has risked discrediting the concept of power-sharing.
The haggling vividly underlines the importance of going into an election with a clear idea of who will work with whom and on what basis.
Much of the electorate who took part in last week's election will have been left with a bad taste in their mouths – and whatever the merits of today's agreement it will not have been what millions of people thought that they were voting for last week.

Nick Clegg, however, has conveyed the impression or wanting to run with the hares and the hounds – and this has left many voters confused.
He has some way to go to convince that the Lib-Con deal is anything but a marriage of convenience.

Philosophically and ideologically the Lib Dems – since their merger with former Labour Party members – have largely abandoned classical Liberalism and opted for a social democratic paradigm of society

The prospect of a Liberal-Conservative axis genuinely never occurred to most of them, which is why it will lead to internal dissent, rupture and resignations"

He refers to previous disagreements over coalition parties which catastrophically ruptured the old Liberal Party and continues

"Liberal Democrats now embarking on their new electoral dalliance with the Conservatives need to recall these precedents and recognise that expediency -based on deal making alone – rather than a genuine meeting of minds on political principles – will end in division and tears."