Pushing the boundaries | 4 August 2012

The conventional wisdom about the consequences of the failure of Lords reform is that the Liberal Democrats will wreak their revenge for the Conservatives’ ‘breach of contract’ by scuppering the boundary changes. Over the past few months, the party has taken great pains to link the two reforms, and now that it is clear that the first will not go through, all focus is on the second. There is much that still needs to become clear about how this will work; the biggest question of all being how Lib Dem ministers can vote against the changes without being sacked. But don’t expect the whole party to troop through the ‘no’ lobby on this issue. I was surprised yesterday by a conversation I had with a senior Liberal Democrat MP, who told me that the party should allow the boundary review to go through the Commons to safeguard the coalition. The MP said:

‘I we get into the position of saying that ‘we will vote for X only if you vote for Y, or we will not vote for X only because you did not vote or Y, then the days of the coalition would be numbered.