It’s sort of funny that the bloke who came third gets to decide what happens next. Will he decide by 10.30 when he makes his announcement?
As I kept saying last night, I don’t see how a coalition between Labour and the Lib Dems makes any sense for the Lib Dems. Throughout the campaign they’ve been all hopey changey, we need a new politics, out with the old, in with the new. Gordon Brown staying as PM just won’t make for very good rhetoric.
On the other hand, my boss reckons Cameron should do a deal with the SNP to give Scotland independence, and the Tories aren’t likely to give Clegg the proportional representation he wants. We’ll see.
My boss also finds it funny that Labour’s argument that the Tories have no mandate with 36% of the vote is a change from what they were saying last time when they only got 35% of it.
Update: Clegg translated: we’ll work with the Tories if they look like they might give us proportional representation.
“I don’t see how a coalition between Labour and the Lib Dems makes any sense for the Lib Dems”
The fact that the two parties are generally closer policy wise (since a lot of long term Liberals are former Labour party if I remember correctly) is probably why.
forget the policies for a sec, the numbers game comes first… it always comes first.
I know a lot of LibDems (Paddy Ashdown springs to mind) were burnt because Blair’s landslide majority in 97 meant he had an incentive to ignore electoral reform.
After equidistance was abandoned (which I always thought was a sham and made a lie of their independent status) it enabled them to spread their appeal in both directions, so they will obviously now have different sections with different sympathies.
It’ll be interesting to see if they can keep them stitched together.