Why did the Liberal Democrats collapse?

[IceAgeComing]

Everyone has given the general reasons why they collapsed in 2010 (tuition fees, appearing spineless in government, messing up electoral reform and House of Lords reform; the latter now probably being something that the Tories are regretting that they blocked; Clegg eating a dog); I can't really add anything about that.

In terms of rebuilding I don't think the past is particularly relevant; the Liberals being were they were in the 1950s wasn't because they angered significant amounts of their base and basically every swing voter that voted for them: but because their support in the decades before was really quite old and died off (lots of people who first voted before Labour were a major political force; plus ) and were replaced by people who were a lot less likely to consider them as an option; plus also the fact that the vast majority of people couldn't vote for a Liberal even if they wanted to probably was a factor.  What we have now is a totally different situation: you have significant groups of people who are still rather angry about the Liberal Democrats and it'd take a great deal of work to change that; plus you have more options for third party voters rather than a single protest party of the middle that tries to appeal to everyone - UKIP is obviously the big one; the Greens do well in some areas as well; especially amongst students who were a big Lib Dem voting bloc.

What they've done well in the past is managing to build up success in local government elections, take control of councils and then convert that success to Westminster elections - a good example of that is actually Tim Farron's seat: that was never really a Lib Dem area until very recently and now its one of the safest Liberal Democrat seats in the country, if not the safest.  The issue is that they are effectively a dead party in lots of places and it'll take a great deal of effort to recover from that.  An example of the struggle that they have in areas that were once good for them is the Isle of Wight which was a place that the Liberals have done very well in the past (held the Westminster seat between 1997-2001, held the Council until 2005 and were the official opposition there until 2013 as well as before that for a long time) and the party has done horribly locally recently: they now only have 1 councillor behind UKIP and Labour (although lots of the Independent group that governs the council at the moment have history within the party, they quit to run as an independent for whatever reason); and in the General Election they went from second well ahead of anyone else to fifth, behind UKIP, the Greens (who oddly did rather well, got 13.4% of the vote and beat Labour: spoke to my Dad about it and apparently their candidate was someone prominent in the community and it was a bit of a personal vote) and Labour, and that was with the local MP restanding when lots of people thought he shouldn't because of a variety of local scandals.  There's still clearly a demand for a non-major party option; its just that no one saw the Lib Dems as that, plus the local base of the party has gone and I'm pretty sure that local party membership is through the floor as well.  Sure there you have a tradition of people voting Lib Dem and that would suggest that its easier for them to recover, but you've also got lots of people who'll struggle to trust them again so that balances a bit.  There are stories like that up and down the country as well: and I'm pretty sure that they lost councillors in the local elections this year and that only makes it harder for them to recover - the only reason that they gained a constituency seat in the Scottish Parliament elections was unionist tactical voting (and maybe a few Greens voting tactically as well, since we got their list seat) rather than any firm support of their policies.  They also get very little media attention anymore: when in opposition before they also got a few guaranteed questions since they were the third party and they've gone to the SNP now; and in terms of trying to get someone on Question Time or other similar programmes they're behind UKIP and the SNP on the pecking order.  Add in that parties of the centre are struggling across Europe and that suggests to me that its going to be a long time before they are a major political force in the UK again.