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Chris Huhne instead of Nick Clegg

The News of the Screws knew of Huhne's affair as early as 2009, they put it on ice because of who he was at that time.

When Holy, Holy Leader Chris Huhne starts getting all nasal and pontificating during expenses, I'm betting his affair comes out.

If Price comes forward on roughly the same timetable as OTL, that would mean Huhne would be being interviewed by police just around the time the general election would fall.
 

Ironically by almost solely focusing on constitutional issues this nicely demonstrates part of the reason why the Lib Dems went down shit creek in government.

This is a good demonstration of that weird tendency in AH that if leaders had just been a lot more muscular everything would have been great and in this case Here's how the coalition could still win.

I think Huhne over Clegg can be a way to save the Lib Dems from themselves but not like this. My scenario above is a possible disaster scenario, but you could also say that Huhne's affair being broke in a different way would lead to Price coming forward quicker and the greater media pressure telling quicker. If Huhne ends up resigning in early 2010 only months before a general election then the party might coalesce around Cable as an already known quantity to the public. I'm not sure it would be enough but that would probably be the likeliest means of aborting coalition altogether in favour of a looser arrangement. It would certainly at minimum result in coalition being done and progressing much differently to OTL.
 
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In retrospect, the sweet spot for the Lib Dems to hit in 2010 was to maximise their seat total whilst still having a Tory majority. Having a more left wing leader like Huhne (or Cable, if the scandal comes out pre-election), who loses more seats to the Tories but partially compensates with seats from Labour, might be the best possible outcome for them. Whether due to election results or his own misdeeds, Huhne would be gone before 2015, and someone more moderate like Clegg could take over and be well placed to take a significant number of seats off of a Conservative government who have had to take the blame for what was likely a more severe form of austerity than they implemented ITTL.

The biggest barrier to that would be fear of the Lib Dems propping up a Labour government also dependent on the SNP. A better result for them at the Holyrood Elections of 2011 might go some way to preventing the nationalist majority and averting the referendum in the first place, but they would be unlikely to be in an especially strong position at that point in the parliament.
 
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