Can he stay or must he go?

Paul Waugh and Matthew D’Ancona are debating whether David Laws will stay or go. D’Ancona is plain that Laws must go; Waugh wonders if this is an ‘Ecclestone moment’ and that Cameron and Clegg will dig in. John Rentoul agrees with Waugh.

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Douglas Murray

The day DEI went up in smoke

Laws’s situation looks bleak, and Andrew Grice concludes that Laws is no longer master of his fate. But it is not hopeless and Laws can survive. Laws is indispensible to the coalition – especially with left-wing Lib Dems Menzies Campbell and Simon Hughes increasingly intent on dissent. Second, who would replace him? There’s more talent on Virgin TV than there is on the blue and yellow benches, and the government cannot afford instability at the Treasury with the emergency budget looming. It’s a case of what colonial administrators described as the ‘Lagos principle’: you’d rather be competently governed by crooks than lorded-over by incompetent saints.