Liberal democrats

Monday

Peter Hoskin

How can the Lib Dems deal against the backdrop of a Labour leadership contest?

And so it begins. With Brown’s statment earlier, the Labour leadership contenders are already creeping out of of the Downing Street woodwork.  Paul Waugh tweets that David Miliband will announce his candidacy tonight.  The News of the World reports that Ed Balls has his campaign primed and ready to detonate.  And I’d be very surprised if there aren’t more names about the enter the fray. All this activity is sending electic currents through the Westminster air – and it could end up burning Labour and the Lib Dems.  Both sides are are saying that they want to create a “strong” and “stable” government.  But how can Clegg & Co. see

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown saves the worst till last

We have just witnessed Gordon Brown’s last and most audacious confidence trick. “Gordon Brown to resign” says the television newsflash: but the story was the very opposite. Gordon Brown is staying on, saying – pretty much – that it will take an SAS operation to get him out of No.10 before the autumn. He declared a “constitutional duty” to stay until a new administration is formed “with majority support in the House of Commons”. Untrue. You just need a majority to pass laws. One can govern with a parliamentary minority (see Alex Salmond in Edinburgh, and Harold Wilson in 1974). Cameron won the right to govern, when he last week

Peter Hoskin

Brown statement: now with added video

And here’s a transcript of the statement “We have a parliamentary and not presidential system in this country and as I said on Friday, with no party able to command a parliamentary majority arising from the general election, my constitutional duty as prime minister is to ensure that government continues while parties explore options for forming a new administration with majority support in the House of Commons. “The business of government has continued including concerted action in Europe today to avert the financial crisis in the Euro area. Alistair Darling the chancellor spent much of his time yesterday in the European finance ministers meeting in Brussels. This morning I have

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The best possible news for the Tories

Gordon Brown’s announcement that the Liberal Democrats have requested formal coalition talks is the best news that the Conservative party has had since the polls closed on Thursday. David Cameron can now say that his party has negotiated in good faith and that his broad, comprehensive, and open offer to the Lib Dems is on table and they can take it or leave it. If the Lib Dems do end up going into coalition with Labour they would completely discredit themselves and be slaughtered at any subsequent election, remember getting PR through the Lords would take at least a year. The markets would also not be impressed by a coalition

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Clegg Decapitates Brown And a Nightmare Looms

So Gordon will go and the Labour party will elect a new leader in time, he hopes, for the Labour party conference this autumn. The problem with a Lib-Lab coalition of course is that it won’t have a majority. One can see how it could limp along but one cannot but think that while a single-party could soldier on as a majority matters would be much more problematic for a coalition minority. Nor does including the tiny parties strengthen matters much. And so, playing Salome, Clegg has got Gordon’s head on a platter and we now have the extraordinary sight of the Lib Dems negotiating with both parties at the

Peter Hoskin

Gordon Brown announces his resignation

You’re witnessing history, CoffeeHousers: Gordon Brown has just announced his departure from frontline politics.  In a statement outside Downing St, he confirmed that he would be stepping down as Labour leader by September – triggering a leadership contest in the process.  It’s clear that he’s using himself as a bargaining chip, making a Lib-Lab deal more palatable to Nick Clegg.  Indeed, he even said that formal talks between the parties are now commencing. This threatens not just to shake the kaleidoscope, but to smash it to pieces.  Until 17:05 this afternoon, most folk thought that a Lib-Con deal was imminent.  But surely Brown wouldn’t have taken this step if there

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The return of David Davis

The shadow Cabinet were gathering before their meeting at 2pm. One member told me ‘it is looking less like formal coalition now.’ But coalition remains the leadership’s preferred option. Talking to Tory MPs—old and new—this morning, there’s a sense that they would slightly prefer minority government. Though, no-one is planning to blow themselves up if the country does end up with a Tory-Lib Dem coalition. One other interesting development today is that there is a growing expectation that David Davis will be recalled to the colours. Certainly, his return would make Cameron’s top team more accurately reflect the ideological balance of the party.  

Peter Hoskin

Do the Lib-Lab talks alter the landscape?

Isn’t it all very cosy?  Turns out the Lib Dem negotiating team secretly met with a Labour delegation over the weekend: Ed Balls, Peter Mandelson, Ed Miliband and Andrew Adonis.  And it’s thought that Nick Clegg has had more conversations with Gordon Brown, both on the phone and in person.  So the Tories aren’t the only ones enjoying some quality LibTime. It doesn’t really alter the cut of the situation, though.  Most folk around Westminster seem to expect a Lib-Con deal, of sorts, at some point today.  But Clegg and his team would weaken their hand if they didn’t at least explore every option.  The Tory leadership will appreciate this

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Who’s using whom?

Another day of live political theatre, staged live at College Green. Given that Cameron last night negotiated a confidence-and-supply deal – ie, enough to keep him in a minority government like Alex Salmond has in Scotland – why is he negotiating further? What’s more to discuss? This is what we find out today. David Steel told Radio Four this morning that Nick Clegg had told him, before the election, that he would put a time cap on any Con-Lib Pact – ie, a shelf life of one or two years. This suggests that the Lib Dems would not fall for the obvious Tory ruse: the offer of a referendum on

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The coalition nears

‘A government by this evening’ is what several Tory MPs have told me they expect. Those who have spoken to David Cameron say that he has no appetite for a second election within 12 months and that he wants the stability of a coalition. David Cameron is in the House of Commons. When I passed him earlier, he was without the entourage that so often accompanies him and was saying hello to those he passed. This might not sound like much but it does suggest that Cameron is adjusting to the new circumstances, that he is taking greater care to be nice to his parliamentary party than he has previously.

Daniel Korski

Who should get what?

In February I pontificated about the composition of Cameron-Clegg government – to general ridicule. The blogpost looks increasingly prescient now that David Cameron seems to be favouring a formal deal with the Lib Dems. Assuming that Lib Dem MPs will sit around the Cabinet table, what ministries should they get? The assumption is that the Lib Dems want six Cabinet post and will probably end with no more than four. The Conservatives cannot give up the Chancellorship, Education or the FCO – departments that are important for the leadership, its worldview and its reform agenda . Nor is it easy to see a Lib Dem in Defence or someone like

Peter Hoskin

So now we know how Boris feels about coalition government

Aside from a few quips about Walls sausages and Meccano, Boris has kept his views relatively private since the events of last Thursday.  But you can always count on the Mayor of London to open up for his Daily Telegraph column, and, today, he does exactly that.  Here’s his take on a Lib-Con coaltion – which, to my eyes, seems more than just a little bit dismissive: “The Lib-Con negotiations are still going on, in a foretaste of the Belgian orgies of tedium and paralysis that proportional representation will inflict on the country. Everyone is trying politely to work out exactly how many Cabinet seats to give a party that

Alex Massie Alex Massie

What A Carve-Up: The Glittering Prizes Awaiting Cameron and Clegg

These are interesting times, aren’t they? Interesting but scarcely simple. Nick Clegg may have suggested that a deal must be done by close of play, Monday if it is to be done at all and all the signs may still point to David Cameron coming to an arrangement with the Liberal Democrats but, clearly, difficulties remain. How could it be otherwise given the complexity of the situation and the stakes? Policy is the least of the problem. If one accepts that the old left-right labels are increasingly outmoded and that the defining divide today is between the centralisers and the localists, between the liberal and the statist then, theoretically at

Sunday

Martin Bright

Confession Time: I Voted Labour

I left the Labour Party in 1994 and re-joined on May 6th 2010. There, I’ve said it. I had always intended to vote Liberal Democrat in this election, but changed my mind in the polling station. It seems I wasn’t alone.  I couldn’t ever quite buy in to the New Labour project, but I would like to be involved in whatever it is that happens next.  Unlike others on the left, I would not be horrified by a Conservative/Liberal Democrat government, although I would be happier with a grand coalition/government of national unity. I voted Labour with a heavy heart. My local MP, Lynne Featherstone is exemplary and the local

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

A rolling Westminster drama

Another extraordinary day in Westminster. A deal looks likely to be agreed by Clegg and Cameron tomorrow morning, put to backbench MPs in the afternoon and then Brown will advise the Queen to send for Cameron on Tuesday. (Brown may choke on those words, but if he says ‘send for Ed Balls’ I don’t think she will fall for it.) This evening at 6pm, the handful of Tories MPs who are in London met Cameron at the Commons to discuss the coalition talks. Rumours still fly but as I understand it a deal has been reached where the LibDems will vote for Tory cuts – thereby fulfilling Vince Cable’s pledge to

David Blackburn

No Lib-Con deal for at least 24 hours

William Hague has just emerged from the Cabinet Office and spoken of the ‘positive, constructive and substantive talks’ between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Discussion has encompassed political reform, reducing the deficit, banking reform, regulation of small businesses, environmental issues and civil liberties. Hague says that a further meeting will take place at some stage in the next 24 hours. ‘That meeting,’ he added. ‘Will concentrate on deficit reduction and economic stability’. The language of the statement suggests that an informal pact is more likely than a formal coalition. It is surely indicative that the follow-up talks aim to secure economic stability in the interests of the country, rather

Daniel Korski

Don’t forget the Party, David

Days, perhaps only hours away from the expected announcement of a Con-Lib deal, the Tory party rank-and-file is getting increasingly restive. Many MPs and party activists do not feel that Team Cameron has been sufficiently attentive to them and their concerns. They look longingly at the Lib Dems, whose democratic set-up enables MPs and party members to make their views known to Nick Clegg and the leadership. In a Tory party that has always favoured single-minded leadership, the options for representing rank-and-file views are few, particularly as the chairmanship of the 1922 committee remains vacant. As a result, many senior MPs have been reduced to calling hacks to find out

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Scotland Will Save England From PR

That’s right. There’s a genial irony here. The very same Scottish MPs whose election helped prevent the Conservatives from winning a majority will be the men – and they are mostly men – who will prevent electoral reform. Those English voters who think it unfair that the great phalanx of Labour MPs returned from these chilly northern climes exercise an undue (in their eyes) influence upon the affairs of state might also pause to reflect that the people who will prevent electoral reform may well be those same Scottish Labour members. Not that this stops the deluded left from dreaming of some grand so-called progressive alliance. They’re all at it

Alex Massie Alex Massie

A Liberty Government? Also: Clegg is Not Kingmaker

No, not a libertarian government, but an alliance between liberal Tories and Orange Book Liberal Democrats is arguably the closest thing we can get to it. Peter Oborne has a splendid column in the Observer today which makes the key point: Indeed the prime minister and his supporters are wrong to argue today that the Liberal Democrats and Labour have far more in common than Lib Dems and Conservatives. Ideologically, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats share one massive idea. They are both doctrinally suspicious of central government. They favour localism, decentralisation, individual freedom and accountability. The want to destroy the big state and all of its paraphernalia: bureaucracy, secrecy

Saturday

Alex Massie

Let’s Talk About Tax

We know that europe and perhaps electoral reform will be difficult for the Tories and Lib Dems to agree upon. So let’s talk about something else: tax. Cameron’s email to Tory members today strikes just the right tone and says most of the right things. It makes it clear that he thinks there’s a deal to be done and, importantly, reminds the membership that the Tories will have to give some things up too if the partnership is to be stable enough to last at least two years. That’s important because it’s one way of building trust and convincing the other party that you’re serious. So, on tax, I’d suggest