Nick Clegg's Britain -

By the time you read this, Nick Clegg may be Deputy Prime Minister of the U.K.—a heady achievement for the leader of a party that's been out of power almost continuously since David Lloyd George sent the Liberals into the wilderness in 1918. But the simplest way to understand that century of futility is that the Liberals, and now the Liberal Democrats, long ago ceased to represent the mainstream of British politics. Now that they've achieved a share of power, the question is what they'll do with it.

Mr. Clegg's Liberal Democrats have made electoral reform the centerpiece of their push for a share of the next British government. But it's hard to imagine a worse advertisement for their preferred electoral system—proportional representation—than the recent negotiations over the outcome of last week's vote.

the Liberal Democrats argue that this outcome understates their support among the electorate—in Thursday's balloting they captured 23% of the vote, compared to the Labour Party's 29% and the Conservatives' 36%. So, dissatisfied with what David Cameron's Tories offered over the weekend, Mr. Clegg on Monday turned to Gordon Brown and Labour, which lost 91 seats in the election, in an attempt to form what one Labour MP aptly described as a coalition of the defeated (the Lib Dems also lost seats in the election).

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