Monday, May 10, 2010
Just When You Thought....
Iain Dale 7:13 PM
In this game you can't ride two horses at once. Conservatives who have taken the LibDems at their word will rightly feel let down by what has happened here. If they were going to talk to Labour - which they are quite entitled to do - surely manners and decorum should mean that it is done when and if talks with the Tories have irrevocably broken down? That point is far from being reached I understand - although with what has happened in the last two hours you could forgive Cameron from picking up the phone and telling Clegg to suck on it. But that would hardly be in the national interest, would it?
I think it is far from certain that the LibDems would be able to strike an accord with Labour. And even if the do, it only takes them to 315 seats. Could a traffic light coalition involving Unionists or the Welsh and Scot Nats really hold together for more than the few months it would take to carry suitcases full of English taxpayers money west and north of the border? I doubt it very much.
And will the British people really stomach a second unelected Prime Minister in succession, courtesy of the Labour Party? What was the point of the Prime Ministerial debates on TV? We were supposed to judge our future PM candidates.
Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell probably think they have pulled of a masterstroke by donning the mantles of men in grey suits and telling Gordon the game was up. But I suspect there are a few twists and turns to come yet.
A Coalition of Losers cannot provide the stable government this country needs. That much ought to be clear to even the thickest Liberal Democrat. How can you possibly go into coalition with a party whose leader you don't even know the identity of? What if a new Labour leader reneged on the terms of a coalition and called an immediate election on taking office? Have you thought about that? Well have you?
I am just hearing that the Conservatives have offered the LibDems a referendum on AV. This is exactly what Brown has already offered. The LibDems must surely realise that that's as much as they are going to get, especially as there is not a majority in the Commons for anything more. Listen to Tom Harris on this. He talks sense.
There are two good things which could emerge from a Lib-Lab coalition. One would be almost guaranteed Tory landslide at the next election, which would surely not be long in coming. And a second would be the virtual decimation of the Liberal Democrats as an electoral force.
Time to make your minds up my LibDem friends.
UPDATE: Still, we can be grateful for one thing. The LibDems have succeeded where a succession of Labour plotters failed!The Consequences of the LibDems Backing Out Now
Iain Dale 1:34 PM
Despite meetings having taken place between the LibDems and Labour, I now find it almost inconceivable that the LibDems can now either turn down the deal with the Tories or switch horses to Labour. The electorate can be a very unforgiving beast, and I suspect that if the result of this is a second general election, the LibDems would be absolutely decimated.
Sam Coates has tweeted that Tory MPs are being sounded out about AV or AV+. It will be interesting to see if that is true, and what the reaction is. Would AV be a price worth paying for an agreement, or would this be a step too far for the Parliamentary Party? Frankly, no one knows. Bear in mind that a huge proportion (more than 50% I think) of the new Parliamentary Party are new MPs and no one knows what their attitude will be.When National Interest Transcends Party
Iain Dale 11:49 AM
Iain Dale, Conservative blogger, says some within both the Lib Dems and the Tories will "rip up their membership cards" if a deal is agreed. He tells the BBC that if party interest was paramount, coalition would be out of the question, but now both sides are putting national interest first so the rules of the game have changed.
I said this on the News Channel earlier as a statement of reality. Of course there will be party members in both parties who cannot see beyond narrow party interest and resign their memberships. I hope there won't be many of them, but it would be ridiculous to pretend that there won't be some refusniks. Everyone needs to concentrate ont he bigger picture here.
In normal circumstances I'd be arguing vociferously against entering a coalition, but we are not in normal circumstances. A stable government is an absoluet pre-requisite to bringing about a stable economy and tackling the deficit.The Montgomerie-Whelan Analysis Is Wrong
Iain Dale 11:31 AM
Tim Montgomerie seems to half agree with Charlie and has just tweeted this...I'm sorry @IainDale but @CharlieWhelan is half right. Labour should have been obliterated but they survived.
No, Tim. Obliteration was never going to happen. The fact is that Labour lost more seats than at any election for decades, including 1983 I believe. The Tories won more seats than at any election since 1931 and got a bigger swing in 1979. The electoral map makes it impossible to obliterate Labour, and Tim should know that. In 1983 they got 223 seats. It is difficult to conceive that they could have ever gone below that. As it was, they improved on that by 35 seats.
We should also remember that there were 16,000 votes in 15 constituencies that were the difference between a Conservative majority and the opposite.
Yes, there were things the Tory leadership got wrong and I will write about those another time, but there were two parties who had glum faces on Friday morning and neither of them were the Conservative Party. Yes, it was disappointing not to have David Cameron walking into Downing Street on Friday, but I think we all believe that's what will happen later on today or tomorrow.
When the interview on the News Channel was finished, Simon McCoy said to Charlie: "You didn't really believe that, did you?" Charlie replied: "I'm a spin doctor!". Says it all.Keep Calm and Carry On
Iain Dale 9:28 AM
I'm sure Cameron, Clegg and their teams will be shedding blood, sweat and tears to emulate Churchill's achievement.
As Churchill might say, "KBO". Keep buggering on!
Monday, 10 May 2010
I hardly know where to start. When I sat down in Richard Bacon's studio at around 3pm, John Pienaar was reporting the news that Nick Clegg hadn't told David Cameron of his meetings with the Labour Party. Pienaar was pretty critical of Clegg and more or less said he needed to grow up. I thought at the time it was probably cockup rather than conspiracy. These things normally are. I know now I was wrong.
Laura Kuenssberg is reporting the David Cameron and Nick Clegg have met again this lunchtime and that the two leaders are now briefing their front bench teams on the agreement which has apparently been reached - or if not reached, which is very close to being reached.
The BBC politics website has just quoted me saying this...
I've only just recovered from being told live on the BBC News Channel that the election result on Thursday was a triumph for the Labour Party and that it was Labour MPs and activists on Thursday night who were cheering at the results. Simon McCoy, the presenter, and I almost collapsed in hysterics and Simon retorted: "Which election, exactly, were you watching?"
My friend Keith Simpson, who always likes to dabble in a bit of historical metaphor, rings to remind me that it was seventy years ago today that Winston Churchill formed his wartime coalition.
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