It is all fun and games here in the UK. On the one hand we have the right wing of the Conservatives telling Cameron that he should have no truck with the Liberal Democrats, and if he could just force a new election immediately and fight it on a much more right wing platform then he’d sweep to victory. On the other hand we have Labour supporters telling Clegg that he should have nothing to do with the Tories and should force a new election immediately in which Labour would sweep to victory and promise to implement PR.
The Tory right sort of has a point, in that another election would probably result in an outright Tory victory. However, the one thing that could prevent that is their fighting it on a much more right wing platform. After all, if people voted for Labour or the Liberal Democrats this time, how would being even more right wing persuade them to change their minds? I note also that the Tory candidates who were caught being homophobic during the campaign did very badly, and the BNP pretty much got slaughtered at the polls. Despite the current paranoia about immigration, hardline right wing policies are not an easy sell here.
As for Labour, if they genuinely believed in electoral reform, surely they would have done something about it the 13 years they have had in power with a massive majority. Deathbed conversions are generally not very convincing. I can understand why people want another election quickly, because a Tory government, even moderated by Clegg, is something to be feared, but at the same time I don’t think Labour or the LibDems have a hope in hell of doing better in the polls until they have given Cameron a chance to show his true colors.
Meanwhile the odd amusing dirty trick is showing up. Yesterday The Observer did its best to torpedo the Cameron-Clegg talks by highlighting a hardline Tory memo about Europe. As it turns out, the memo was prepared before the election, not as part of the negotiating process which has been surprisingly leak free. I’d be prepared to bet that the memo was sent to The Observer by Tory hardliners, and The Observer used it because they are following the hardline Labour position.
In addition I am seeing a lot of people on Twitter RTing tweets from someone calling themselves @UKLabourParty. This is very odd, because the official Labour Twitter stream (as advertised on their website) is @UKLabour. The @UKLabourParty tweets are passionately pro-electoral reform, but the official Labour tweets have nothing to say on the issue. My guess is that either @UKLabourParty is being run by some fringe group on the left, or it is a deliberate scam. Either way it is a dirty trick designed to convince LibDem supporters that Labour is pro-electoral reform, and an awful lot of people appear to be falling for it.
Update: I may have underestimated the Tory right. This Guardian article suggests that the UKIP vote, though small, cost the Tories 21 seats. I haven’t checked the numbers, but I have no reason to believe that they are wrong. Of course the UKIP position is for total withdrawal from Europe, which Cameron must know would be a foreign policy disaster, and probably an economic one too. He can no more espouse that than Labour can espouse nationalization.
Meanwhile Gordon Brown has agreed to step down as Labour leader in order to facilitate negotiations with the Lib Dems. That suggests that negotiations between the Tories and Lib Dems are not going as well as they might.
From afar, I’ve thought Gordon played his role with some class. From things that were said in the U.S. press about him at the time he became P.M., I’m guessing he’s, um, “terribly upset” would be a British understatement for it. But once he was handed with Clegg’s announcement they’d talk to Cameron first, he publicly handled it like a statesman, without the open gaffaw that a Cons/LD coalition would seem to deserve (like a Democrat/Tea Party coalition here might).
Well the Tories are not exactly the Tea Party. UKIP are much more like them. (And the BNP are the equivalent of the white supremacist militias.) Cameron has much more in common with The Gubernator than with Sarah Palin.
This is turning into great spectator sport. If we the electorate wanted to see our politicians humbled and embarrassed we couldn’t have planned it much better.
Is it just me or are Labour, oddly, in the position of strength here? Gordo’s resignation was basically exactly the same kind of desperate come-hither knicker flash as Osborne’s subsequent offer of a referendum on AV, yet somehow he sounded like a statesman doing the decent thing and the Tory offer sounded like they’re going on their knees and grovelling before Clegg.
And the Tories are being forced to consider policies they find viscerally unbearable, at least at the level of their party base. *And* they’re reduced to going on air to brief against the very people they’re desperately trying to woo. *And* all the time they have to keep trying to claim that they “won”, which of course acts as a perpetual reminder that they didn’t. *And* the split between their relatively centrist leadership and their unreconstructed grass roots is becoming more and more obvious.
Labour has none of these problems. They’ve used the situation to find an elegant way of disposing of their hopelessly unpopular leader. Their offer to Clegg is clearly in good faith, since everyone knows there’s a far greater overlap between them and the Lib dems than there is on the Tory side. And they leave the ball in Clegg’s court, so even if we end up with a “coalition of losers” it’ll look like the Lib Dems’ fault.
Essentially, for those of us on the left, we managed to win even though we lost. I believe the term is “go figure”.
Labour’s problem is that, even with Gordon gone, they are still a party that was decisively rejected by the electorate. Also they don’t command a majority seats, even with Lib Dem help, so it would be very difficult for them to get a Queen’s Speech passed. Their best hope is, I think, that Cameron will screw up and make it look like he was unwilling to negotiate with Clegg.
Of course there’s also a story going round that Labour has made support for ID cards a pre-condition of any deal with Clegg, which sounds monumentally stupid to me.
I was thinking Brown’s decision to step down was an odd move if we’re headign towards a second election. If that happens then the Lib Dems will lose a hell of a lot of seats due to people not wanting to risk having a third election and you can never underestimate the people’s willingness to go with the devil they know, given how much of Tory policy has come to light since the start of the campaign (to whit, they don’t see what all the fuss was about the killing of Sau Paulo’s street children).
Anyway, Mitchh Benn made a great point on Twitter: The best thing about a Conservative/Liberal coaliton would be the US press’s attempt at getting their head around the idea.
So we get a Labour/LibDem coalition government, headed at first by Brown until he duly steps down as promised and a new leader arises and we get another 5 years of ANOTHER unelected Labour Prime Minister?
There is a downside to this.
Anyone who is interested in the Continuing Story of the UKs political soap opera could follow the ‘ story so far ‘ here …
” 1742Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Vince Cable tells Sky News a deal is “very close to being done”.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/liveevent/
In essence the Labour Party is very divided .. always was really. In the late afternoon a group of the more stroppy left wing labour MPs .. who would contain a fair number of those MPs who occupy Safe Seats and thus don’t need to give a Damn .. met to discuss how best they might put a banana skin under any plan for a Rainbow Coalition of ‘Progressive ‘ ..how I Hate that term that has become so fashionable .. left wing parties. The Rebel Alliance can be added to those of the Old Labour fraternity who HATE the Scottish Nationalists to their very souls and so a rainbow combination vote on any proposal could fail at any second.
Nick Clegg is not an idiot, knows the opposition as of old, and could never be convinced that the Labour Big Wigs – who are dying on their feet -could ever Command their Party to OBEY. This leaves a Lib’Conservative Alliance as the only practical possibility left beyond the Con Men Going it Alone and Daring the Opposition to gainsay proposals made by the Con Fen on the basis of Patriotism.
If Nick did that he’d be DEAD in the water come the next election in a year or so … Evil Sneaky and Devious …Not Nice – well meaning – Nick at All they would say.
The Terms of the Lessor of Two Weevils Empire, as expressed in the Piece Treaty should be very interesting.