Shortly after the 2015 British general election, Nick Clegg went for dinner with a friend. He knew, after the Liberal Democrats’ humiliating defeat (the party lost all but eight of its 57 seats), that his time as leader was coming to an end, but he had no intention of fading into obscurity: he had, he said, things he wanted to do in the world.

In coalition, the Lib Dems had acted as an internal opposition, a check on some of the Tories’ more aggressive policies, but in the public eye they simply shared the blame for austerity, triple-strength tuition fees and the privatisation of Royal Mail.

New Statesman