Nick Clegg, Britain's deputy prime minister, fighting to retain his seat
Britain's deputy prime minister and the leader of the country's centrist Liberal Democrat party, Nick Clegg, is fighting to retain his seat in parliament and save his political career in a general election this week.
Support for the Liberal Democrats has plummeted since the party won almost one in four votes in the 2010 election, putting them in government for the first time since 1945 as the junior coalition partner of the centre-right Conservatives. Shortly before the agreement with Prime Minister David Cameron was forged, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is said to have remarked to him: "The little party always gets smashed!"
That may prove true for the Liberal Democrats, who now have roughly eight per cent support according to opinion polls, and for their leader Clegg.
A multilingual former Eurocrat, Clegg is fighting a close battle to retain his parliamentary seat in Sheffield Hallam in northern England, where an April poll showed the Labour candidate narrowly ahead.
About a third of the party's 57 seats across Britain are under threat in Thursday's election.
But with no party expected to win a majority in the May 7 vote, the remaining Liberal Democrats may still be needed to prop up a government led by either the Conservatives or their rivals, the centre-left Labour party headed by Ed Miliband.
Clegg, 48, has indicated he will speak first to whichever party wins the most seats and has vowed to anchor the next government to the centre ground by tempering Conservative cuts and Labour borrowing.
"If you don't want to run the risk of our country lurching to the right, lurching to the left, the only way to guarantee to keep our country on track is to vote Liberal Democrat," Clegg said in a rallying campaign speech at a cricket club in southern England.
He has announced that health spending, an increase in funding for education and a salary raise for public sector workers are "red lines" in any coalition talks.
Traditionally Britain's third party, the Liberal Democrats have been damaged by the rise of alternatives such as the Green party, the anti-immigration UK Independence Party and the Scottish National Party.
They were accused of selling out by forming a coalition with the Conservatives and their attempt to reform Britain's voting system fell flat. But the act that most heavily damaged Clegg's reputation was his breaking of a pledge not to raise university tuition fees, made as he courted the student vote before the election.
