The National Union of Students will launch a "decapitation" strategy aimed at ousting Nick Clegg and other top Liberal Democrats from parliament in protest at the party's U-turn on student fees. The move aims to build on anger about coalition policies – which spilled over into violence on Wednesday – in Lib Dem-held constituencies with large student populations. The key targets will be Clegg in Sheffield Hallam, Simon Wright in Norwich South, Stephen Williams in Bristol West and Don Foster in Bath.
Aaron Porter, president of the NUS, said the campaign would aim to force out Lib Dems who break their pre-election pledge to oppose any rise in tuition fees. The move has echoes of the Lib Dems' own "decapitation strategy" in 2005, when the party threw resources into efforts to oust leading Tories with narrow majorities, including Michael Howard and Theresa May. Porter said the NUS will make use of a coalition idea for holding MPs to account that was championed by Clegg himself. The "right to recall" initiative, which has yet to became law, proposes that a by-election can be called if an MP is judged guilty of serious wrongdoing and 10% of constituents want him or her removed.
More likely is that the NUS could mobilise support against selected MPs ahead of the next election. Extra efforts will be made in the four target seats – with 1,000 students taking to the streets of Sheffield in an attempt to get 10% of Clegg's constituency to sign a petition. The Lib Dem leader, who held Sheffield Hallam with a majority of 15,284 at the May election, has around 10,000 students in his constituency. Others could be more vulnerable, such as Wright, who beat Charles Clarke in Norwich South by just 310 votes. Porter said: "It will serve to undermine the wafer-thin mandate this government has on university cuts and debt."
Students will not target MPs who have promised to vote against the policy to raise fees to as much as £9,000, such as Tim Farron, who has just been voted Lib Dem president. Farron opposes the rise but insists the Lib Dems had made it a fairer package than it would have been under either Conservative or Labour. Evan Harris, the former Lib Dem MP who topped the elections for the party's federal executive, attacked the campaign as a "partisan stunt". He pointed out that manifesto promises could only be fulfilled if a party won a majority and said the NUS never suggested voting against, "let alone recalling", Labour MPs who broke election pledges on top-up fees.
However, Caroline Dowd, Sheffield Hallam University's student union president, said her members were livid. "We could not get [Clegg] out of our union before the general election. He came and spoke about how MPs should not make promises and then break them, about how fees were wrong." She said there were 1,000 students in Sheffield prepared to take to the streets to gather names for a petition and there would be a protest outside Clegg's constituency office on Thursday.
Clegg's problems mounted as the Guardian revealed secret documents showing that he and other senior Lib Dems were preparing two months before the election to drop their promise on fees in the event of a coalition. John Denham, the shadow business, innovation and skills secretary, said Clegg had no "credibility" left on the issue. "This week he said he should have been more careful before promising he would vote against fee increases, but now we know he was planning to drop his policy long before he made this promise."
