Woah, hang on there. A Labour and Conservative coalition in the event of a hung Parliament? Crazy talk, surely? But that’s what Martin Kettle devotes his column to in today’s Guardian. It’s only unthinkable, he writes, “until you start thinking about it.” Hm.
So rather than dismissing the prospect out of hand, I thought I’d register one particular complaint against it. While many of Kettle’s arguments about the fracturing of the party system and the blurring lines between the main parties make sense, the idea that they might coalesce in the aftermath of this year’s election ignores one crucial factor: the Labour leadership.
Let’s just say, for the sake of Kettle’s argument, that Gordon Brown achieves a hung Parliament after the election. Will he still be Labour leader? If so, then I really can’t imagine that his first post-election action will be to secure a pact with a Tory party which he hates with almost unrivalled venom. That
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