Not Long For Clegg Now.

[TWR]

It this person's time coming to an end? Miliband said they will not have the LIB /DEM joining them, what's your views?

[Gromit]

Sometset is mostly LibDem constituencies. Not sure the Thames flooding affects more than a handful of Conservative areas. The flooding itself will be forgotten in 15 months. But the perception that they are incompetant will stick.

[youngmafbog]

//But the perception that they are incompetant will stick. //

Incompetent at what? Telling God not to flood us?

As for EA cuts, that is not really the problem at all. cuts can be made by trimming the fat off the management layers, but of course a left wing run Quango wont do that will they?

Cuts also dont stop the problem of some of the right-on brigade in the EA putting frogs and newts before humans.

Clegg was never going to be around for another Parliament. I wouldn't worry for him though he will soon have is snout firmly back in the EU trough, I strongly suspect he has lined something already.

[youngmafbog]

In addition, decent flood defenses take years to build so why didnt labour build them, they had long enough.

The reason they didn't is mainly because it is simply not cost effective.

The answer is don't build on flood plains but that doesnt seem to sink in when someone wants a view, then they expect all the rest of us who dont have a nice view to pay for theirs wen it all goes pear shaped.

[LazyGun]

The floods might not have been Camerons fault, but anyone who thinks the coalition have managed the government response to these floods competently is in cloud cuckoo land.

And trying to blame the last administration, or trying to excuse the cutting of hundreds of EA staff as "trimming the fat" is risible.

One of the main reasons the EA have been hampered in their response was the change in Treasury rules on spending for flood defences, insisting on an 8:1 return on investment ( for comparison, the Treasury is only insisting on a 2.3:1 return on investment for HS2) on any flood defence project, hampering or shelving many proposed defence programmes. This also limited the amount of money available for dredging.

And that is just dealing with the effects of the flood; Dropping of regulations and changes in DEFRA rules has contributed to the extent and severity of the flooding this time round.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/17/farmers-uk-flood-maize-soil-protection

[jeffa]

Nick Clegg has a 15,000 majority in Sheffield Hallam, which will be extremely difficult to overturn. He is by all accounts a popular constituency MP. Of course, if he decided not to stand in 2015, that would be a different matter entirely. That said, if he did stand and lost, I think that would virtually be the death knell of the Liberal Democrats.

[ChillDoubt]

Milliband won't have the option anyway as I reckon UKIP will get more votes than the Lib Dems.

[jno]

more votes doesn't matter; only more seats does, and I don't see Ukip getting any.