make the very good point that any leader who had had to deal with all the issues of the past 2 years would probably have ratings just as low as Nick's are now -- or worse. But again, that's a strawman, because if we change leaders in, say, late-2014 / early-2015 as is being suggested, the new leader would by definition NOT have to deal with all that stuff, and would go into the election with a reasonably clean slate. So the answer to your first question is that we would be changing leader so that: 1) The new leader wouldn't be too closely associated with the Conservatives, or at least wouldn't have given the appearance of having a preferance for coalition with the Tories rather than Labour, as Nick has done (probably unintentionally and unavoidably as a result of circumstances, but nevertheless most people think he wouldn't want to work with Labour). If we go into the next election with Nick at the helm, the public will assume that we will form another post-election pact with the Tories almost regardless of the election result. 2) The new leader wouldn't be personally identified with the tuition fees debacle. We can argue for years to come about whether we actually broke our pledge (for the record, I don't think wer did) and whether the new system is better and fairer than the previous one (which I think it is). But like it or not, the communications were handled so catastrophically badly