I don't think Loz's comment is as daft as its being painted.

Things might look moderately rosy for Nick Clegg at the moment, but 24hrs into being part of a coalition isn't really the time to judge whether he's a winner or not.

If it all goes swimmingly for the coalition the Tories will take the credit. If it all goes t*ts up they'll be able to blame those nasty leftie Lib Dems.

There's plenty of time for things to go very wrong politically and electorally for the Lib Dems.

Was Clegg ever going to be in a position of power otherwise?
I think not, therefore, currently he's a winner.
All winners politically, apart from retirement end up as losers, at least in national politics.
Just ask Thatcher, Blair & now Brown.

You miss my point.

Its not about whether Clegg personally gets some nominal power for a short while but whether entering a coalition with a party with regressive policies is likely to spell disaster for his party either with the electorate (by betraying the principles of his voters) or at Westminster by splits within his MP's ranks.

Equally, had he partnered with a reluctant Labour party he'd have ran similar risks from being attached to a weak coalition, however tempting from a policy perspective such an alliance might seem to him.

If he gets a referndum on PR and that goes in his favour he'll have been a winner and is likely to be forming coalitions for the rest of his career on the back of that system. If he doesn't then he's likely to see a loss of seats and votes at the next election.

By contrast Cameron, despite making an utter botch job of the election, would either get power anyway or could watch a LibLab pact limp on for a few months before getting a landslide. Nothing to lose. Brown, having lost the mandate would either resign and accept defeat or limp on for a while before being destroyed in an election within the next 12 months.

I assume Loz's point was that Cameron was always going to win; Brown always lose but Nick Clegg would run an enormous risk for his party's future whichever way he went.

I've just received a very long and apologetic email of explanation from Greg this morning as to why he voted to agree to the power sharing coalition, frankly I'm not bothered for in my world of "shoite happens, get on with it" it matters not who is pulling the strings, politics is for the politicians, life is what happens in the real world and if VAT goes up to 20% then so be it, I'll just sell some more paintings.

I think you make a number of valid points & had you made the original post I may not have responded as I did.
Time will tell.
I hope for the country that the coalition shows that consensus politics is the way forward rather then the adversarial system we've largely had previously.