All The News And Views On Tarty Nick Clegg And Gordon Brown Quitting
THREE Prime Minsiters and one election fail – doo-dah, do-dah. News round-up:
David Blunkett:
“Can we trust the Liberal Democrats? They’re behaving like every harlot in history.”
Daily Star (front page): “SORT IT OUT YOU CLOWNS”
Stop thinking of yourselves & start running the country
Daily Mail (front page): ” SQUALID DAY FOR DEMOCRACY”
Brown quits but cyncially bids to keep Labour in power by guaranteeing two-faced Clegg voting reform
Daily Express (front page): “THIS SHABBY STITCH UP”
Brown quits so Labour can cling to power in sordid deal with Clegg
BRITAIN was last night facing rule by a “coalition of losers” as Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg edged towards a “sordid” political stitch-up.
Daily Mirror (front page): “FOR THE GREATER GORD…”
Brown is “dignified”
The Sun (front page): “GOING BROWN”
Chaos as Clegg flirts with Labour”
That’s why one senses an epochal shift here. David Cameron has an agonizing choice to make – try for a minority government that will make all the tough and right decisions and get pummeled at the polls in six months; try to get an agreement with the Liberals without p.r.; fail to get a deal on p.r. and have Labour make it instead and form a short-term government with the Liberals and smaller parties and try again for a victory in a few months before p.r. can be installed; or risk allowing Labour and the Liberals to stitch up the system for the center-left for the indefinite future while in government together. I don’t know the inside details – no one seems to – but I’d almost rather hand this poisoned chalice to Clegg and Miliband and hope for the best in a few months’ time.
The Tory media (and the Tory Boys) just don’t get it. Cameron waltzing into No 10 with 23.5 percent of the vote was fine, but Brown trying to establish a coalition that holds up 37 percent of the electorate is somehow a “bleak day for British democracy”.
Actually, there does not seem to have been a better time for British democracy. The electorate essentially voted for “none of the above” and that’s precisely what we’ve ended up with – throwing the political classes into disarray, their claques into confusion and the media into apoplexy.
This is serious sleazy territory: it reminds us that nice Mr Clegg is a true Lib Dem at heart, after all, opportunistic to the core. That is what Liberal Democrats are like, and the Liberals before them: suburban wheelers and dealers, always ready to cut a deal on their own terms – the terms in question invariably relating to power rather than political principle. I watched them at it when I was cub reporter covering local councils – how upright and sensible the loony Left of Labour seemed in contrast! – and now I’m depressed, but not surprised, to see that they are back on the game.
Nor will Clegg’s squalid move do him any good. From now on, he and his party will be regarded as traitors by the Tories and with private contempt by his new friends in Labour.
Clegg’s own reputation has been severely damaged. He has also done a great disservice to the Liberal Democrats – and to the reputation of British politics.
A former colleague summed it up yesterday. “I want to help David,” he told me. “And, to be frank, I want to be a minister even more. But I just can’t live with proportional representation. My seat would be torn up. I could lose my job. And the party would split. It’s a concession too far.”
David Cameron may sometimes dream of ditching parts of the Right of his party – the bits that didn’t vote for him as leader in 2005 and have grumbled ever since he won – and of strolling off into the sunset with Nick Clegg to build a new, dominant Centre Party (the Cleggaroons?). But in his heart, he knows that this shimmering vision is moonshine.
Tom Harris (Labour MP):
The word “progressive” has now been redefined as “willing to barter away everything you campaigned for in return for the chance to be in government, albeit at the beck and call of a party that has spent its entire existence trying to wipe you off the political map”. Who knew?
Now we are told that the maths does work; if you throw in Plaid Cymru, the SDLP, the Scottish Nats and some of the Northern Ireland MPs. It is a contraption described to me by one Labour MP as a “pantomime horse” which would soon be dispatched to the knackers yard.
Sam Coates – what Nick CLegg says to Labour:
. . . to Labour
You couldn’t stop saying “I agree with Nick” during the election campaign, so now it’s time to put that to the test. You say you’re serious on electoral reform, but we’ve been here before. I know that some of you believe it but isn’t Ed Balls just going along with something he’ll vote down later?
Even if you do mean it, can you deliver? I’m not sure you’ve got the votes for a stable coalition or even a referendum on AV. Can you rely on the Labour tribalists? The Scottish Nationalists? I don’t want this to fall apart after a few months and get the blame.
Best outcome for Clegg
He gets full PR and seats in the Cabinet supporting a newly popular Labour Party
Worst outcome for Clegg
He props up an unpopular Labour Party whose leader is replaced by an unelected Prime Minister that Clegg has no say in choosing
“If Mr Clegg does get into bed with Mr Brown, we will know that the politician who on Friday was the Mr Integrity of politics cannot be counted on to keep his word, either about whom he prefers to do business with or about delivering stable government. He will have entrenched the party that lost, given a second life to the Prime Minister who was voted out, and six months later put Britain in the hands of another leader without a popular mandate.”
“The real question is for Nick Clegg. Does he now stick to his chosen path and do a deal with the Conservatives to the fury of many in his party or does he switch to Labour, risking the wrath of those who will accuse him of creating a coalition of losers?”
“The revelation of secret talks with Labour over the weekend has incensed many Tories. It is as if a bridegroom busy planning a wedding found his fiancée was secretly planning an alternative wedding with another suitor. If there’s no trust at this stage, some Conservatives complain, what hope is there for the future?”
“This is a cabal in Number 10, basically playing politics with the country’s future. What’s interesting is that there’s been no open consultation about this measure. We haven’t seen the Cabinet meet, we haven’t seen the Parliamentary Labour Party be recalled to a meeting – in fact, no Labour party meeting is scheduled until Tuesday. Under the rules Gordon Brown is perfectly able to make this offer but it does appear to be a very strong attempt to stick a large spanner into the bandwagon of whatever the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are doing. And the gamble for Gordon Brown is that it simply drives the others into each other’s arms.”
Posted: 11th, May 2010 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
