http://conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/2009/11/liberal-democrats-gain-three-council-seats-from-the-conservatives.html

Without quotation marks, it’s rather difficult to tell where your remarks start and the ones from Conservative Home begin!

Some very interesting local election votes just in from Conservative Home

Although the Liberal Democrats lost one seat to Labour they gained seats from us in St Austell & Newquay, Stratford-on-Avon and High Peak. I don’t know the local circumstances in these setbacks but we always have to remember that such is our current dominance in local government across England, in particular, that further gains are always going to be much tougher to secure now.

You have made 14 postings on this thread, some of them quite interesting. But I do think it’s a pity that it was only on the 12th of these postings that you revealed that you are in fact a Tory!

1974 March 1-4: Heath’s attempt to form a coalition with the Liberals
Following the General Election of February 1974, Prime Minister Edward Heath found himself deprived of his Parliamentary majority. The Conservatives won the largest share of the vote, but a handful of seats fewer than Labour. (Parliament was “hung”: no party held a majority.) A file (PREM 15/2069) tells the story of his attempt to remain in power by forming a coalition with the Liberal Party, led by Jeremy Thorpe.

It was the first time since the 1930s that a peacetime coalition government had been seriously discussed. Officials carefully recorded the outcome, although a key document – Robert Armstrong’s ‘chronicle’ of the whole episode – had strayed from the file released in January 2005. Following a Freedom of Information request from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, the missing item was found in one of Harold Wilson’s files (PREM 16/231) and is now being released for the first time.

http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/E39D78DE7FBF4C7583FDFC8F7A029D42.pdf There are 21 pages here of the meetings between Heath an Thorpe about the offer from the Tory party to the Libs to join up with them.

How Tories handle a hung Parliament

By Benedict Brogan Politics Last updated: November 27th, 2009

1 Comment Comment on this article

A BBC colleague has drawn my attention to this fascinating piece of history made available thanks to the Margaret Thatcher Foundation. It’s a memo prepared by Robert – now Lord – Armstrong on the secret coalition negotiations between Edward Heath and the Liberals after the February 1974 election.

The wider file was released by the National Archives in 2005, but the Armstrong memo was mysteriously missing. To its credit the Foundation used an FoI request to winkle it out. The background on the fall of Heath is worth studying before looking at the memo itself. Armstrong was Heath’s private secretary and linkman with Buckingham Palace.

There’s all sorts of telling details in it, including that Heath and his officials thought it would be dishonourable to seek to cling on if Labour was marginally the biggest party, Armstrong’s assessment of Labour’s economic weakness (v familiar), the unreliability of Unionists, how Jeremy Thorpe escaped journalists by dressing as a farmer and trekking across muddy fields, the importance of sherry, and what restaurants Mandarins use. It is also packed with tension. When it all failed, and Heath and Armstrong sat in the car taking them to Buckingham Palace so the Prime Minister could tender his resignation to the Queen, “there was so much, or nothing, left to say”. It’s an invaluable document for all those in CCHQ preparing for the worst.

Tags: Edward Heath, hung parliament, Margaret Thatcher Foundation, memo, Robert Armstrong

Although the Liberal Democrats lost one seat to Labour they gained seats from us in St Austell & Newquay, Stratford-on-Avon and High Peak. I don’t know the local circumstances in these setbacks but we always have to remember that such is our current dominance in local government across England, in particular, that further gains are always going to be much tougher to secure now.

St Austell Bay, Cornwall (Truro & St Austell moving to St Austell & Newquay) a LD gain from CON. Con vote was 47% -12, Lab 5% -2, LD 48% +14.
Blackbrook, High Peak (High Peak) a LD gain from Con. Con vote was 39% -22, Lab 4% from nowhere, LD 57% +18
Stratford Alveston, Stratford-on-Avon (Stratford-on-Avon) a LD gain from Con. Con vote was 44% -5, Lab 6% from nowhere, LD 47% +8, Green 3% -2, UKIP did not stand losing 8%.
Halewood South, Knowsley (Knowsley South moving to Garston & Halewood) a Lab gain from LD. Con vote was 2% -3, Lab 46% +5, LD 37% -4, Ind 2% from nowhere, BNP 9% from nowhere, The United Socialist Party 4% -9.
Moreton West and Saughall Massie, Wirral (Wallasey) a Con hold. Con vote was 70% +10, Lab 19% -5, LD 4% -4, Ind 4% from nowhere, Green 3% -1, UKIP did not stand losing 3%.
Clifton, Fylde (Fylde) a Con hold. Con vote was 35% -9, Lab 7% -7, LD 22% from nowhere, Ind 34% -8, Green 1% from nowhere.
Bushey Heath, Hertsmere (Hertsmere) a Con hold. Con vote was 75% +8, Lab 10% -12, LD 16% +5.
Northop, Flintshire (Delyn) an Ind hold. Con vote was 23% from nowhere, Lab 16% -15, LD 15% from nowhere, Ind 28% -41, 2nd Ind 18% from nowhere.

THERE IS NO CHANCE OF CLEGG BECOMING PM !!!!! Cameron would allow the Lib Dems to join Brown before aggreing to that.
I was around when the SDP started and was a early member, and at one stage with David Steel and the Liberal Party looked odds on to win the election. They didn’t because no one could see which David would be the leader.
This election will be the same, the voters will give their vote to the man they want to lead us, not what the parties are telling us what they will do.

In my view if Vince Cable was the leader then the Lib Dems they could have won this election, as in a number of polls he comes above all the party leaders.

Well, it seems to me that you think Clegg meant “seats”, but that there were reasons not to say so in so many words. Fair enough if that’s what you think, but we’ve seen the result – many commentators have interpreted it as “votes” and gone beyond that to suggest it implies a preference for an arrangement with the Tories.

I don’t think it’s an easy question to answer, but I don’t think what Clegg came up with is an answer that will work well in an election campaign. He seems to have gone for something simple but ambiguous, and ended up with everyone feeling free to interpret it as they please. I think it would be better if he could come up with something unambiguous but nuanced – preferably designed so that it won’t matter too much if some people miss the nuances.

The Marr question (who is assumed to be sympathetic to our cause) was an opportunity to put this to bed, but it seems the issue is a bit more convoluted than could be dredged up in a simple statement.

The first problem with saying straightforwardly that seats is what matters is that it undermines the case for electoral reform, so Clegg used the term ‘mandate’ in a clear reference to the current state of affairs, which we are committed to change.

The second problem is raised by Mouse, who points out that ‘the largest numbers of seats’ in a multi-party system can itself be the cause of confusion because it can refer either to a single party or bloc.

I’m really not surprised that this confusion causes some heated language, but I’d hope from better if we are to eventually work it to our advantage.

As someone who is too young to have been an SDP or Liberal member and probably wouldn’t have joined either if I had, I take an alternative view that the longshot of Clegg as PM in a hung Parliament is possible.

A risky strategy perhaps for the other parties to allow, but with a constitutional convention and a short parliament one which could be seen as a temporary solution.

Cameron couldn’t risk splitting his party (many of whom are wedded to FPTP) if electoral reform was the price, and Labour cannot be trusted having avoided it since 1997.

So consider an EU-style cabinet with Clegg as PM, Cameron at the Home Office and Brown returned to the Exchequer – at least in preparation for the introduction of a new voting system… it could be argued to suit all their purposes, by strengthening each leaders’ hand without overly damaging any of the parties – once it was agreed that electoral change has become inevitable there would be a growing momentum for a national government.

Obfuscation does indeed have its limits as a strategy. However, it is only one of several ways to keep our options open. Another way of doing it (the monochrome way!) would of course be to admit openly that this is what we are doing.

Nick could say something like “Look, Jeremy, we’ll decide when we get there who we think has got the strongest mandate. It could be decided on whatever basis we think fit. Just to take an awkward example, if party X were to sneak a narrow winning margin by dint of turning semi-racist in the last week of the campaign, we might tell the nation that we think party Y got the strongest moral mandate. So – you’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”

Now, that sort of response would certainly have the merits of honesty and directness. However, it is a cruel unfair world out there. You can bet that all our opponents, and probably Paxman as well, would dive in with sneering comments. “What, we all have to wait for your godlike decision, Lord Snooty, do we? Who the heck do you think you are? You’re just evading the question. You really want to jump into bed with party Z, but you don’t dare admit it, do you, you horrible evasive little third rate politicians?”

Sometimes, I fear, we do all need to take the Oranjepan masterclass in using a lot of words but not giving away any real meaning!

From The Press Ass
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20091122/tuk-clegg-will-back-strongest-party-6323e80.html
They think it is seats?

But we’re talking about a situation in which no party “wins” the election in that sense.

There’s no “must” about it, or most of the press wouldn’t have got the impression he was talking about votes, not seats. And that’s probably because Nick Clegg’s answer to the question of whether he would think it right to back the party with “the biggest number of seats, or votes, or what?” included the words “So the votes of the British people are what should determine what happens afterwards”.

It is interesting that the Right wing of the Tory party think Cameron is too Liberal, while the Left wing of the Liberal party feel Nick is too right wing. So could if Brown won the election be after this election be a parting of the ways, with UKIP taking the right wing of the Tory party with it, and a new centre party of Cameron and Clegg ?
We live in interesting times.

What puzzles me is that Oranjepan has already said “The way things currently stand seats is what matters.” That seemed clear enough for the world’s biggest fan of monochrome, but for some reason he seems incapable of saying “Yes” to the proposition “So you think he meant seats, not votes?” But it may just be that amateur politicians find it just as difficult as professionals to give a straight answer to a direct question.

Anyhow, I’m afraid the problem with obfuscation as a strategy for dealing with this question is that it wouldn’t survive five minutes in an interview with Jeremy Paxman or someone like that. And it’s just not an option to limit access to the party leader exclusively to “Mumsnet” during an election campaign.