Reply #8: They talked that way before they formed the coalition with the Tories

[suffragette]

but haven't been acting on it much since then from what I can see.

Maybe when they were in opposition, they walked the talk more.

British UK'ers can speak to that more than I could.

Here's an an Op-ED that has some good points to it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/06/andrew-rawnsley-lib-dems-byelection
Then there is the unwinding of support for the Lib Dems among those who once saw the party as a leftish alternative to Labour. From Tony Blair's second term onwards, the Lib Dems successfully attracted voters who had become alienated from New Labour because of its authoritarianism and the Iraq war, among other things. Those voters were always likely to head home to Labour once it was in opposition. The process was accelerated by the Lib Dems' decision to go into coalition with the Tories.

A third group of voters backed the Lib Dems at the last election because they posed as a saintly alternative to the grubby compromises of power. It is arguable that disillusionment among this group might not have been so swift and severe had the Lib Dems made some different decisions. If they knew then what they know now, if they had anticipated that Nick Clegg would be burnt in effigy on the streets, the senior Lib Dems would surely have thought harder about the consequences of breaking their promise on tuition fees. Even so, they would still be a disappointment to many of those voters once they had made the big and redefining choice to go into coalition with the Tories.

So the protest voters are off to find different vehicles to express their discontent. Many of the change voters are cross that the coalition is not the change they wanted or expected. The leftish support for the Lib Dems has largely fallen back into the arms of Labour. Who does that leave? The Lib Dems still have some residual backing among voters who continue to prefer them to Labour or Tory. Then there are the hardcore Lib Dems, the sort of people who will stick with the party through thick, thin and thinner. There are not huge ranks of them. The number of voters who tribally identify with the Lib Dems has never been that large. Their core vote could be as low as 5%.

Nick Clegg has privately warned colleagues that they should be braced for a "remorseless battering" over the next 12 to 18 months as the government becomes more unpopular and forces from left, right and within their own party attempt to pull the coalition apart. He will be spending a lot of his time urging Lib Dems to keep a cool head and insisting, as he did after the Barnsley result, that people would be wrong to "write us off". For it will be increasingly fashionable to declare that they are doomed. From within his own ranks, there will be more restlessness that the Lib Dems aren't being assertive enough within the government and more fear that their identity is being emasculated by coalition. Some Lib Dem ministers are nervous that there will be outbreaks of open mutiny at their party's spring conference this week. The Lib Dem candidate in Barnsley offered ammunition to the dissenters by reporting that his party was seen "as one" with the Tories. According to Mr Carman: "In the minds of many voters, if you wear a yellow badge you might as well wear a blue one."