When Prime Ministers resign it is usually the lead item on the news. But Gordon Brown’s hari-kari yesterday was wedged between revelations of secret Labour talks with the Lib-Dems and the Conservatives' bizarre offering of a referendum on the Alternative Vote system.
Obviously, the Tories don’t mean it. William Hague’s body language said as much. He looked like a disgruntled father-of-the-bride trying to find the warm words through gritted teeth, to welcome his feckless son-in-law. You will struggle to find more than a handful of Tories who support PR or think it a price worth paying for a majority Government. Cameron risks seriously alienating the old guard like Tebbitt who, Dave should not forget, is not too old to deliver a swift kick to the ‘cajones’.
The points of negotiation have reached farcical levels. It reminded me of the ‘Not the Nine O’Clock News’ company boardroom sketch when industrial action would be averted if the unions were offered, “use of this swivel chair in future discussions and your wife’s recipe for lemon ice-cream.”
Brown’s resignation ‘ploy’ was to lure the Liberals back into the rainbow alliance. Stepping down would, in theory, allow re-newed leadership to give such a coalition a certain vigour. The plain fact is, it doesn’t have the numbers. There are other colossal strategic reasons why the coalition of the walking wounded would be serious political folly. The idea of forging a coalition with SNP is just fantasy politics. You couldn’t get Labour and Nationalists in one room without hand-to-hand combat breaking out.
So thankfully the ‘grey beards’ of the parties have invited themselves onto the airwaves to counsel against it. I heard David Blunkett, John Reid and Paddy Ashdown make the self-same points in the space of half an hour on R4 this morning. These are politicians who have been around a bit. They’re not posturing, they are telling the brutal truth.
Obviously, the Tories don’t mean it. William Hague’s body language said as much. He looked like a disgruntled father-of-the-bride trying to find the warm words through gritted teeth, to welcome his feckless son-in-law. You will struggle to find more than a handful of Tories who support PR or think it a price worth paying for a majority Government. Cameron risks seriously alienating the old guard like Tebbitt who, Dave should not forget, is not too old to deliver a swift kick to the ‘cajones’.
The points of negotiation have reached farcical levels. It reminded me of the ‘Not the Nine O’Clock News’ company boardroom sketch when industrial action would be averted if the unions were offered, “use of this swivel chair in future discussions and your wife’s recipe for lemon ice-cream.”
Brown’s resignation ‘ploy’ was to lure the Liberals back into the rainbow alliance. Stepping down would, in theory, allow re-newed leadership to give such a coalition a certain vigour. The plain fact is, it doesn’t have the numbers. There are other colossal strategic reasons why the coalition of the walking wounded would be serious political folly. The idea of forging a coalition with SNP is just fantasy politics. You couldn’t get Labour and Nationalists in one room without hand-to-hand combat breaking out.
So thankfully the ‘grey beards’ of the parties have invited themselves onto the airwaves to counsel against it. I heard David Blunkett, John Reid and Paddy Ashdown make the self-same points in the space of half an hour on R4 this morning. These are politicians who have been around a bit. They’re not posturing, they are telling the brutal truth.
For now, it’s over.
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