Stephen Glover, writing in the Daily Mail, says the Liberal Democrats were the biggest losers:

"In Thursday's English local elections the Lib Dems produced their worst performance for more than 20 years. In Scotland, something of a traditional stronghold, they have been routed, winning a much smaller percentage of the vote than even the Tories, and helping to pave the way for the Nationalists' triumph. And on the AV referendum Mr Clegg's party has suffered a humiliating defeat. It was the prospect of electoral reform, eventually leading to proportional representation, which convinced the Lib Dem leadership that they should sign up to the Coalition. Now those hopes have been dashed, and the cause which Mr Clegg and his colleagues have virtually lived for has crumbled into dust."

In the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland argues that the poor performance by the Lib Dems in the local elections and the rejection of AV were a "repudiation of Clegg". He believes this highlights the power dynamics within the coalition:

"Lib Dems now understand exactly why the Tories were so eager to make that "comprehensive and generous offer" a year ago this weekend. It was not so much a power-sharing arrangement as a blame-taking one: the Lib Dems' role is to be the Conservatives' human shield and on Thursday they played the part perfectly. They took the heat while the Tories remained unscathed, their share of the vote unchanged since 2010, with even some council gains in England. For the senior partner, coalition is working out very nicely."

New Statesman blogger David Allen Green suggests a strategy through which the Liberal Democrats can begin their recovery:

"The Liberal Democrats in the coalition need to emphasise differences with the Conservatives. Clegg should ration his appearances alongside Cameron. One realises it is perhaps not practical politics for the Liberal Democrats to go into opposition and offer their support on a vote-by-vote basis (though there is no constitutional or legal reason why they cannot); but it is crucial that the party develops a ministerial reputation separate from that of the Conservatives."

The Sun's Trevor Kavanagh argues that "Nick Clegg's thrashing" is likely to mark "the beginning of the end" for the coalition:

"The voters' message is that the Lib Dems are catastrophically damaged and perhaps finished as a political force. They must now cling to their detested Tory partners for dear life - or risk obliteration in a general election."

And, in its Bagehot Notebook, the Economist suggests that David Cameron may have won the AV referendum "too well", meaning that he "risks being handcuffed to a political corpse" in the form of Mr Clegg. It says the prime minister has "ordered his people to go easy on the gloating, and give Mr Clegg the space and room to defend himself":

It would be pretty ironic if an AV landslide forces the Conservatives to make concessions to Mr Clegg when a narrower win would have allowed the Tories to be tough on their junior partner.

The Daily Telegraph's Con Coughlin says the SAS "has now suffered the most damaging blow to its reputation in its proud regimental history".

"The role of the SAS is to fight, not to make peace, and to put the regiment's soldiers in a position where, for reasons of diplomacy, they are required to surrender their weapons without so much as a whimper is not what they are trained to do... But it is not the SAS that should hang its head in shame over this fiasco: it is the idiots who authorised the operation in the first place."

Sam Greenhill, of the Daily Mail, spoke to a Libyan farmer who helped capture the SAS officers and explained why the unit aroused so much suspicion.

"We fired into the air, and said 'Hands up, don't move'. They did as we said. It was not very difficult, we just asked them to move away from their bags to the side, and they did... "We do not want to make enemies but this is no way to make friends, dropping in, in the dead of the night, with espionage equipment, recording devices and multiple weapons and passports."

Richard Norton-Taylor, writing in The Guardian, says the incident showed the "gung-ho and arrogant attitude" of the SAS, at a time when the government has highlighted the elite unit's growing importance.

"Official secrecy surrounding SAS operations is acknowledged by many senior defence and military officials to be a nonsense, characterised in practice by hypocrisy and inconsistency... The potential for more transparency, without endangering lives, should be one of the lessons to come out of it."

"A monumental cock-up" is how The Independent's Mary Dejevsky describes the mission and she calls for those responsible to be held to account.

"Let's start with the basics: Who on earth dreamt up this catastrophically misconceived mission and who signed off on it? And I don't mean only which department, but names - real names."

The Mirror quotes a former SAS soldier who says the mission "was badly planned and under-resourced." The paper calls the incident a "fiasco" which has put the government under the spotlight.

""Defence Secretary Liam Fox tried to distance himself from the bungled ­operation. But an ex-SAS soldier told how it exposed shocking gaps in the Tory-led ­Government's ­commitment to our armed forces."