All sensible people are bound to sympathise with David Laws as his soaring ministerial career crashes almost before it has taken off. I’m not too sure, though, about what is fast becoming the conventional wisdom among the commentariat: namely, that he has paid a high price for his perfectly honourable attempt to preserve his privacy [...]
Some jewels from the print media …the day after an email exchange about liberty between Tony Blair and I was published in the Observer, … Henry Porter, The Observer 16 May 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/16/henry-porter-civil-liberties-coalition …an exhausted-looking Boulton jabbed his finger and furiously refuted Cameron’s claim that the Sky man wanted to see David Cameron in Downing [...]
Dear Harriet, Decisions about what kind of opposition Labour is going to be obviously can’t wait until the leadership elections in the autumn: it falls to you to set the tone and issue the guidance as soon as you possibly can. I was pretty horrified to see Alan Johnson on television today attacking, in his [...]
For one brief shining moment it looked as if Camelot might be possible after all: the LibDems and Labour share much common ground; very many — probably most — LibDems see themselves as left of centre and in many cases are deeply anti-Conservative. The Labour Party is gradually moving to support for some kind of change [...]
My Google Alert service has belatedly noticed this: Twitter / LabourList: Brian Barder on what Gordon’s people should say to Clegg’s people if parliament is hung … http://www.barder.com/2526 Brian Barder on what Gordon’s people should say to Clegg’s people if parliament is hung… http://bit.ly/9wKCI0. twitter.com/LabourList/statuses/13413302414 I wrote this two days before the election and put [...]
The media, electronic and print, are in one of their periodic feeding frenzies over the hung parliament and the leisurely horse-trading (very much the right word, alas) over who might form a British government one day. The prime minister, in office but no longer in power, has very sensibly gone home to Scotland, where he’s [...]
5pm on Friday 7 May 2010 with only one more result to come in today: Tories 305 (36.1%), Labour 258 (29.1%), LibDems 57 (23.0%). I don’t think that the LibDems have any serious alternative to signing up to Cameron’s not particularly generous offer and getting the best deal they can in terms of policy concessions. [...]
It’s 1030am on Friday 7 May, the morning after the night before. Enough results are in to make it arithmetically impossible for any one party to win an overall majority in parliament. As expected, the Conservatives will be the biggest party and will have won the biggest share of the vote. Labour will be the [...]
In my previous blog post I sketched out a possible message that Gordon Brown’s emissary might usefully deliver to a representative of Nick Clegg, the LibDem leader, in the event of a hung parliament. This took the form of a statement of the Labour government’s intentions regarding its programme to be submitted to parliament, to [...]
If there’s a hung parliament after Thursday’s election, whatever the position in terms of votes cast and seats won, Gordon Brown constitutionally remains prime minister until and unless someone else can demonstrate beyond doubt that he is better able than Brown to command the confidence of a majority of MPs. I have discussed these rules [...]
