Nick Clegg, Britain's deputy prime minister and the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the country's coalition, is set to lose his seat at a national election next month, according to a poll published by former Conservative deputy chairman Michael Ashcroft.
Clegg's centre-left party's share of the vote has more than halved since it joined forces with Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives in 2010, and polls show Clegg has gone from being the most popular party leader to the least liked now.
Five years of coalition government with Cameron's Conservative party has left the Liberal Democrats and Clegg's supporters dismayed, with some political commentators suggesting that the party will be decimated in the election on May 7, with Clegg potentially the biggest casualty.
In an exchange at the pair's first press conference together after the two had clashed throughout the 2010 election campaign, in the Downing Street rose garden, a reporter mocked Cameron's change of stance on Clegg.
"Prime Minister do you now regret when once asked what your biggest joke was, and you replied 'Nick Clegg' and Deputy Prime Minister, what do you think of that?" he said.
The new Prime minister and deputy prime minister both laughed it off, but the five years of coalition government wasn't always so cordial.
Internal wrangling within the coalition saw the Liberal Democrats clash with the Conservatives on austerity measures, cuts to public services and other neo-liberal economic policy.
Clegg made an electoral promise during the 2010 campaign which eventually came back to haunt his party, that if in government, the party would vote against any rise in university tuition fees.
Just months into their first term in office, Clegg made a U-turn supporting lifting a cap on fees students paid. This tripled the amount from just over £3,000 ($A5816) per year to more than £9,000 ($A17,448).
Breaking election promises
The move sparked days of mass student demonstrations in November 2010 in London, with protesters smashing up the lobby of Millbank tower.
Many blamed Clegg for breaking his election promise.
"We are absolutely disgusted of what the coalition party is proposing to do. I mean, Nick Clegg even said he would scrap school fees altogether, now he wants to increase them three times,'' said Fiona, a college student protesting at Trafalgar Square.
Later on into his term in office Clegg made an emotional apology to voters in a party political broadcast, he said that the original promise was a ''mistake''.
''There's no easy way to say this, we made a pledge, we didn't stick to it and for that, I am sorry,'' he said.
The apology later became a viral hit, after it was parodied and turned into an auto-tuned song by an online publication.
Part of the coalition deal involved a guarantee of a referendum on electoral reform. The Liberal Democrats had traditionally argued that Britain's first past the post system of constituency representative members of parliament puts them at a disadvantage and argued for a proportional system.
Clegg campaigned for the Alternative Vote (AV) and the country held a referendum on whether to change systems on May 5, 2011.
The result was a resounding 'No', with only 32% of votes cast supporting the yes campaign.
''This is a bitter blow for all those people like me who believe in the need for political reform, but the answer is clear and the wider job of the government and the Liberal Democrats in government will continue: to repair the economy; to restore a sense of prosperity and jobs and optimism to the country and that's the job we've started and we will continue," said Clegg.
Later on that summer in August the streets of London saw the worst riots for more than a decade after a man was shot in north London by a police officer. The event set off a chain of events across the capital, which included looting, assaults and mass civil unrest.
With the prime minister away on holiday, it was left to his deputy to respond to the chaos.
"It was needless, opportunistic theft and violence. Nothing more, nothing less, and it is completely unacceptable,'' he said.
Phone hacking scandal
One of the largest crises during the coalition's term was the phone hacking scandal which forced the closure of the mass-selling Sunday tabloid, the News of the World and prompted a huge police inquiry.
Prime Minister Cameron was heavily criticised for his his perceived closeness to media mogul Rupert Murdoch and former editors of the newspaper Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks, who were both charged with a conspiracy to hack voicemails.
Clegg called on the editors and the Murdoch's to face a select committee of MP's due to a mass public outcry, after the News of The World were found to have hacked the voicemails of a murdered schoolgirl.
"You can't hide away from this level of public anguish and anger and indeed interest," he said.
Coulson received an 18 month jail sentence whilst Brooks was cleared of wrong doing.
The deputy prime minister, unlike many of his coalition colleagues is a staunch europhile. Clegg has voiced his support for British European Union membership and also took part in television debates on the Union against anti-EU UKIP leader Nigel Farage in 2014, he claims that his party are the only pro-europe party united in their stance on the continent. Traditionally the Labour and Conservatives have had divisions and disagreements within their parties on Europe's influence on British politics.
Nick Clegg has publically backed European reform and is opposed to Britain leaving or re-negotiating their membership of the union.
''Reform or wither. Reform now or regret it forever. I am clear, I am ambitious for Europe's future but if we want to create a Europe able to hold its own in the 21st century we cannot simply fall back on the reflexes of the past," he said to the European parliament in Brussels.
The Liberal Democrats consistently campaign that they have helped to moderate Conservative austerity, with a promise echoed by Clegg throughout the campaign and in the seven-way leaders debate to ''Cut less than the Tories and to spend less than Labour''.
Throughout the past five years from party conferences to the campaign trail Clegg has been often pictured with his wife, international Spanish lawyer Miriam González Durántez.
With opinion polls predicting neither the Conservatives nor Labour will win the May 7 vote outright, Clegg's party could again be called upon to help form a government in 2015.
Clegg has said he intends to remain as party leader, but should he lose his seat, a constituency with a large student population, Sheffield Hallam, he would come under pressure to step down. His likely successors range across the ideological spectrum, potentially changing the calculus of any coalition negotiations.
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