In what’s believed to be unprecedented in recent times, Vince Cable has held talks with Nicholas Macpherson, the big cheese at the Treasury, about Lib Dems economic policies and what might happen in the event of a hung/ balanced parliament.
Cable was unaware of such meetings having taken place with Lib Dem shadow chancellors before previous general elections. The talks were a sign that the Treasury was “taking seriously” the prospect of his party playing a leading role in economic policy in what could be the first hung parliament since 1974.
Vince has also declared himself ready …
Good morning, and welcome to Daily View. I’m standing in for your usual Tuesday host because Sara was rushed into hospital yesterday. Get well soon, Sara.
March 16th in history saw the resignation of Harold Wilson in 1976; in 1995, Mississippi finally ratified the 13th Amendment and officially outlawed slavery in US.
Today is the birthday of Isabelle Huppert and Jimmy Nail.
Police investigate Labour MP Ashok Kumar’s death
Police and doctors are investigating the death of a Labour MP whose body was found at his home yesterday.
Dr Ashok Kumar, 53, had been working as normal, with major commitments as parliamentary private secretary to Hilary Benn, the environment secretary. He was also campaigning for Corus steelworkers’ jobs in his Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland constituency. His body was found after anxious staff failed to rouse him by phone and called emergency services, who broke into his home.
Labour MP Tom Harris, bless him, is clearly feeling a little bit insecure, as the Lib Dems enjoy a successful conference with a spring in their step and the full glare of the media spotlight. Tom’s blog is a good, fun read – but like his Tory equivalent Iain Dale, he has a bit of a tribal blind spot when it comes to the Lib Dems.
Here’s what Tom has to say about Lib Dem shadow schools secretary David Laws declining to take the media bait asking whether the party would back Labour or the Tories in the …
Very sneakily, Clegg’s team have found a neat way to turn questions about hung parliaments into a positive message about Lib Dem policy. We saw it on the news today, and I’m sure we’ll see it wheeled out again – and again, and again, probably until journalists get bored of asking the question.
When asked what the Lib Dems would do in the event of a hung parliament, Nick’s strategy is to say what the Lib Dems would want to get from any sort of deal, which mysteriously matches closely with the four key themes. Nick says we would …
Today Tom Baldwin in The Times reports on its exciting persistent investigative journalism into the party’s “triple lock” rule for deals with other parties:
The exact wording of this rule, disclosed only after repeated inquiries to Liberal Democrats headquarters this week, sets a high bar for clearing “any substantial proposal which could affect the party’s independence of political action”.
A pedant would point out that it was “disclosed” here back in November. Then it was Steve Richards I took to task (for calling the rule – which was debated in public at party conference – “secret”).
Perhaps you should add us …
With most polls showing the next election could result in a hung parliament, there has been various speculation about what the Lib Dem position would be. I think it’s time for Nick Clegg to make an unambiguous statement that the party would not enter a coalition with either Labour or the Tories. Here are my five reasons why Nick should spell this out clearly and simply now …
It’s quite simple: the majority of party members will not for a single moment entertain the idea of a coalition with …
It’s a mark of a good piece of analysis that it is still sound even if the particular news story that prompted its publication doesn’t stand up for long. And so it is with Stephen’s piece over on Comment is Free, triggered by the Guardian story – firmly rubbished by the party – about the party’s attitude towards coalitions.
So although The Guardian story has been ridiculed – after all the paper has variously reported that the party wants a coalition with the Tories, wants a coalition with Labour or doesn’t want a coalition at all – Stephen’s three tests …
The Liberal Democrats are planning to rule out forming a coalition government with either the Conservatives or Labour if Nick Clegg holds the balance of power in a hung parliament after the general election. … senior Lib Dems are making clear that Clegg has no interest in taking cabinet posts and would focus instead on winning support for four key Lib Dem demands.
Clegg would be prepared to throw a lifeline to the Conservatives or Labour by allowing either party to pass a Queen’s speech if the aspiring government makes concessions in the four areas, described
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Two articles by broadsheet columnists on the prospect of a hung parliament bookended this week. In their contrasting ways, both made a convincing pitch for the attractions of neither Labour nor Tories ending up with an overall majority at the next general election.
First up is Martin Wolf from the Financial Times, writing today that Britain can love hung parliaments:
The bogeyman of a hung parliament is being used to terrify British voters. What is needed, it is argued, is a government with a strong majority, to rescue the UK from the threat of national bankruptcy. This is nonsense. The UK
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Ah, the question the media loves, and Lib Dems hate: just who would the party back if there were a hung parliament?
Now we’ve asked this question before in an attempt to get the media to understand the position of Lib Dem members (despite the wilful attempts of BBC2’s The Daily Politics to mislead viewers with flawed polls). But we’re going to try it again to see if this time the media will listen to what LDV’s sample of Lib Dem members actually think about what the party should do in the event of a hung parliament.
Some 200 members …
Lib Dem MP Lembit Öpik has written an article for the Progressive London blog based on his speech to their recent conference on the topic, The Tories are not Progressive. Lembit reveals himself to be a “left-leaning libertarian” with deep scepticism that the Tories under David Cameron have actually changed. There’s lots of eminently quotable material, but here’s just a few excerpts:
I’m a practical kind of person. I don’t like the high levels of dogma which seems to attach itself to party politics and elections. There are good people in every political party, and no major grouping is
…
Well, no, it’s probably not. But it must at least qualify for the laziest piece of journalism this decade. I refer to today’s Independent article, ‘Clegg faces party backlash over Tory alliance’, by Nigel Morris and Michael Savage. Oh, go on, then, here’s a link if you must; though I begrudge handing them the traffic. The opening para gives a flavour of the kite-flying, unsourced speculation:
Nick Clegg faces a backlash from grassroots Liberal Democrats if he moves his party too close to the Conservatives in a hung parliament.
Well, yes, he probably would. Which is why he won’t. Unless the …
Over at The Times, Nick Clegg has penned an article setting out, perhaps in the clearest detail yet, exactly how the Lib Dems will respond in the event of a ‘hung Parliament’. He begins by noting the heat-without-light debate that the new year has brought:
Much of what we have heard so far is unsurprising: absurd pledges on spending, vitriolic attacks on cuts. But one development is new: both the old parties now claim to be almost identical to the Liberal Democrats. David Cameron and Gordon Brown are ostentatiously flirting with Liberal Democrat voters, clumsily trying to woo them —
…
Happy New (General Election) Year!
On this day in 1973, the UK joined the European Community, along with Denmark and the Republic of Ireland. On January 1, 2002, Euro coins and banknotes became legal tender in twelve of the European Union’s member states.
It’s a quarter of a century since Britain’s first mobile phone call was made. In a seemingly random intersection of the Fates, comedian Ernie Wise was calling from St Katherine’s Dock to a room above a Newbury curry house – the then office of a little company called Vodafone.
Is a Labour-Tory coalition unthinkable? Only until you think about it
Martin Kettle muses in the Guardian on a hung Parliament:
It seems innocent to assume that either Labour or the Tories would automatically turn first to the Liberal Democrats in those circumstances – or that the Lib Dems would necessarily deliver. The big parties could calculate that they would be better off in a marriage of convenience with a historic enemy they respected, from which they could withdraw with dignity when the moment was right, rather than to embark on a more permanent entanglement with a Lib Dem party which at bottom they each despise.
The more one looks at the evolutionary dynamics of British politics, the more serious the grand coalition option may one day become. Is a Labour-Conservative deal really unthinkable? Only until you start thinking about it.
At least the next government won’t be decided on the toss of a coin… or will it?
Coin tossing through the ages
The Telegraph has an interesting history, including this:
Today’s Times publishes a study by Professor Colin Rallings and Professor Michael Thrasher of Plymouth University based on actual votes cast in the dozens of by-elections that take place for council seats each month. Here are the headline findings:
It shows that although David Cameron’s Conservatives have a 10-point lead over Labour as the year draws to a close, the gap has been narrowing since the summer. The by-election model, which has been reworked to take account of different patterns of competition between the parties, has the Tories on 38%, with both Labour and the Liberal Democrats on 28%.
The calculations
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Rather belatedly* The Voice is delighted to highlight an article by Lib Dem blogger James Graham over at The Guardian’s Comment Is Free site, the subtitle of which is a neat, Tweet paraphrase of his argument: ‘The idea that the Lib Dems want to jump into bed with Cameron is a fantasy. But multiparty politics is likely to be the new norm’. But as ever with James the article is well worth reading in full. Here’s an excerpt:
There is no enthusiasm within the party for co-operation with the Conservative party, but working with Labour is almost as unenticing a prospect.
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Since yesterday, in fact. Because in an otherwise thoughtful piece on hung Parliaments in The Independent, Steve Richards made this comment:
If there is a hung parliament there will almost certainly be no formal coalition government, even if Nick Clegg and Vince Cable would like to join one. Clegg is trapped by what is known as his party’s “triple lock”, a hidden rule that might become of vital relevance. Before entering a coalition he is bound to secure the agreement of his MPs, other national representatives and the membership.
Credit to Steve Richards for knowing about this rule. But “hidden”? It …
An email pings into LDV’s email inbox from the Lib Dems’ director of election communications, Jonny Oates, stating categorically that Nick Clegg did not express a preference for dealing with the Tories over Labour.
Now it has been known, just occasionally, for Nick to speak a little faster than he thinks. But, as I posted here, yesterday Nick really was crystal clear about how he would approach the vexed question of a ‘hung Parliament’ – and still the media managed to distort his remarks! In rebutting today’s inaccurate press reports, all Jonny had had to do is reproduce the …
It’s a long time since LDV has carried a ‘Media Moron Watch’ feature … but if we were still running it, the spoils today would be shared by pretty much every newspaper. Here are the headlines from the so-called quality press today:
From which headlines a disinterested reader would conclude the following: Nick Clegg has categorically ruled out doing a deal …
To be a fair, a former Labour minister, ex-SDP leader and Tory voter is probably the natural person to advocate a national unity government – and that’s exactly what David Owen has done today in an article in The Times:
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, and his deputy, Vince Cable, need to position themselves as ready to shoulder the burden of responsibility for hard economic choices, and help to provide, with one of the big parties, the principled, practical government that the country so sorely needs. That means talking to voters about participating in a government of national unity.
The
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Watch for rabbits out of hats
Nick Clegg interview draws 1.1 million viewers
Local Blog: Question Times with Bracknells PPC's
Well done Talan
Why does Daniel Hannan want UKIP to die?
America's insurers just got 32 million new customers given to them
Cash-gordon.com - Fail, thrice fail (and not because of the platform)
Time to negotiate
The Liberal Democrat general election prospects: what does history say?
Cab for hire
