Nick Clegg’s got one heck of a decision to make.

He’s not just deciding which party gets to be in power in the UK. He’s deciding the fate of the Liberal Democrat party.

He’s got three choices, which I couldn’t outline better than Stu Campbell has here: side with Cameron, side with Brown, or side with no one and allow a Conservative minority government.

It’s the first of these three decisions that’s currently being scrutinised by Clegg and his advisors, weighing up whatever Cameron may have offered him in their private talks. Should he align his party with the Conservatives, guaranteeing a clear majority, and most likely securing some powerful positions in government for Lib Dem members? It must be tempting for anyone in politics, to be that close to power. But Clegg’s got a Liberal Democrat membership to convince – 75% of them – before he could make that commitment. Oh, and the small matter of giving up proportional representation (PR). Oh again, and giving up the future of the Lib Dem party forever.

Liberal Democrat voters do not have an enormous amount in common with Tory voters. Tory voters, if we may generalise appropriately, are anti-immigration, pro-low taxes for the rich, anti-Europe. Lib Dem voters are pro-immigration, pro-taxing the rich, pro-Europe. Those are some fairly hefty opposites, amongst many others. The Lib Dems, despite being a centre-left (ish) party, are the closest the UK has to voting for a major party that tiptoes close to socialism.

You can split the Lib Dem vote roughly into two groups. You’ve got loyal LD voters who always vote for the party. And you’ve got those new voters (despite their losing five seats on Thursday, the Lib Dems did indeed increase their vote – once again bringing us back to the importance of PR for the party) who switched previous allegiances in response to either disillusionment with the current two parties, or intrigue after the party’s increased profile via the televised debates. With the latter group are all the first-time voters who saw them as a party that represents younger people.

If Clegg opts for a Tory pact, then the first group – the loyals – are absolutely betrayed. Lifetime LD voters (me included) will have had their vote for the Liberal Democrats scrubbed out, their X re-drawn in the box for the Tories, entirely against their will. Voting for the Conservatives goes against every fibre of my being – they are the most despicable of the parties, their extreme right-wing policies worn with pride. (Sure, they’ve tried to hide some behind Cameron’s shiny face for the last few months, but they’re always there.) When I went to the voting booth on Thursday, I went with the aim to keep the Lib Dems in in Bath, and to keep the Conservatives out. So did 26,651 other people. If Clegg did this, then why would any loyal Liberal Democrat ever vote for them again?

The second group, the first-timers, will have had a message given to them very clearly: voting for Lib Dems is meaningless. Their policies, their campaign, wasn’t only up for compromise, but complete abandonment. Why do that again? Why not vote for one of the two parties that actually gets into power yourself?

So Clegg betrays a vast amount of his electorate. That’s the first step in ending the Liberal Democrats forever. The second is abandoning any hope of PR.

In the late 1990s/early 2000s the Conservatives were all but done. Major’s epic defeat in 1997, followed by Hague’s equally astonishing failure in 2001, saw them in tatters, many predicting they could never recover. Under Ian Duncan Smith they were a laughing stock, frequently falling into third place in polls, leaving a vast open space for the Liberal Democrats to step into. Charles Kennedy, then the leader, responded to this opportunity by hiding behind a table until it went away. Presumably with some whisky. It was horrific to watch. Here was this extraordinary opportunity to make themselves known as the alternative vote to a Labour party whose popularity was about to crumble, and they did nothing whatsoever. Instead they kept quiet until the Tories put the familiar vampiric face of Michael Howard in charge, and pulled the party back together. Phew, eh? Now they could hide in third place just how they liked it.

They’re in a whole new crazy version of that place right now. Here, for the first time in an unimaginably long time, they have a chance to get the British electoral system completely revolutionised. The two-party con-trick that’s been running for the last century would be over, the carefully plotted fixing of the system to ensure either Lab or Con are in power could be demolished. With proportional representation in place, the Liberal Democrats could, in one or two elections time, be in a position to actually win. (To get an idea of how corrupt it currently is, LD received 79% of the number of votes Labour did, but won 22% of the number of seats – it’s absolutely impossible for them to get into power.) Without it, they never, ever will. Opportunities to put PR in place come up, well, almost never. It’s happening right now. Siding with the Conservatives will ensure it definitely doesn’t happen.

There are rumours floating that the Conservatives would offer a referendum on electoral reform as a carrot to lure the Lib Dems into the coalition. But then out comes the stick, as they pummelled them to death. Such a referendum would be a trick. It would have, say, five options. One of these would be the current first-past-the-post system that the Tories need to keep, and they’d invest vast sums into campaigning for this. The other four would be variants on the system the Lib Dems would like, various forms of proportional representation, each with benefits and weaknesses. The idea being, any of those four would be good for the Lib Dems, and thus the vote would be split between the four, diluted down four ways so it couldn’t possibly beat the first. It would be a deliberate obfuscation of the vote to ensure that the status quo gets kept, in what they could claim was a decision made by the British people. Any offer of electoral reform from the Conservatives would be the classic evil genie wish granting, turning it back on the wisher in the cruellest way possible.

Clegg can take Cameron’s deal and presumably get himself a position in the cabinet. He can get political power. And then, by the next election, the Tories can ditch them and carry on as it has always been. Clegg can choose Cameron. He can choose to betray his voting core, disillusion any new voters, and completely abandon any hope of his party ever getting into power. He can choose to return the Liberal Democrats to the position the Liberals took in the 50s and 60s, gaining perhaps two or three seats in the Commons. Or he could maybe choose something else.

PS. Stu points out this comment on his site which gives some precedence for my soothsaying:

“I honestly can’t believe Nick Clegg is still even thinking about a Lib-Con pact. Your analysis is absolutely correct, RevStu.
This situation reminds me of what happened in Australia 12 years ago. An unpopular right-wing government wanted to bring in an unpopular VAT. The Australian Democrats party had the balance of power. The Democrats were almost indistinguishable from the Lib Dems, both in policy and support – they were mainly voted for by centre left voters who thought Labour was corrupt or not in favour of civil liberties.

Anyway, the slightly right-of-the-party leader of the Democrats did a deal with the Liberals (extracting almost zero concessions) because she felt that the Liberals had a right to govern. Sound familiar?

With the benefit of 12 years we can see how it turned out for the Democrats. From having 10.8% of the vote in 1996, and the balance of power, at the last election in 2007 they got 1.3% and basically don’t exist any more.

I predict a similar scenario for the Lib Dems (complete with multiple changes of leader) if there’s a Con-Lib government.”