5 Days in May, by Andrew Adonis – review

Andrew Adonis enjoyed a week of glory in 2010. The former Lib Dem activist was asked to join Labour’s negotiating team as they tried to forge a coalition with Nick Clegg in the aftermath of 6 May general election. Adonis admits that his account of those five days is ‘vivid, partisan and angry’. And it seems strange that, as a Lib Dem defector himself, he should accuse the Lib Dems of ‘perfidy’ in their dealings with Labour.

The politician in him can’t resist the opportunity to attack his former colleagues. He shoves the knife into David Laws for admiring George Osborne and for advocating ‘faster and deeper’ cuts to the deficit. When Laws wrote a book on the same subject, 22 Days in May, he suppressed the Lib Dems’ draft agreement with Labour. Adonis publishes it here purely to embarrass Clegg and co with the infamous clause 3.4, ‘a commitment not to raise the cap on tuition fees’.