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.