Britannia Radio

You shouldn't have blinked, Dave

After the shocking and shameful political events of the last twenty four hours, I think the biggest loser is once again David Cameron – and I don’t just mean because he might now lose his chance of governing the country to the squalid Labour/LibDem deal which emerged yesterday. It’s because, under pressure, he blinked.

However cynical and anti-democratic Brown’s manoeuvre was in announcing his staged (in every sense) resignation as Labour leader in order to lure Clegg into a Labour coalition, it is no less than might be expected from a leader and a party characterised by political corruption, manipulation and deceit. Clegg’s two facedness, hypocrisy and total absence of principle iare in keeping with the LibDems’ reputation for playing the dirtiest politics around and their manifest unsuitability for power.

Cameron was the one who had most to lose – and he has lost it. He was wrong to have responded to Clegg’s blackmail in the first place – he should have said he would not do any deals with a party that had been rejected by three quarters of the electorate. He should have calculated that Clegg would not bring a minority Tory government down and thus risk being branded as irresponsible and unprincipled in the face of a national ecionomic crisis. But having entered into negotiations with the LibDems in good faith, when Clegg’s perfidy became known yesterday Cameron should have walked away. Instead he upped his offer to promise a referendum on AV, thus effectively offering to wipe out some of his own party's parliamentary seats and make it harder to achieve a Conservative majority in future. If Cameron is so feeble under pressure from Nick Clegg, how would he react to the pressure from the enemies of this country, or in any kind of national crisis?