This is not how to win friends and influence people. Sad that it is John Denham who is throwing this hissy fit, I thought he was more mature. I wonder what he’s like to work for?

Someone’s upset that the dream of locking out the Tories forever is unravelling.

Incredibly stupid, Labour needs to realise the days of the 2 party system are over, more so with electoral reform, and it cannot hold the monopoly on votes from that large group of people that lump themsleves under the label “the left”.

As for “The Lib Dems have ceded all right to say they are a progressive party.” Denham might like to consider labour’s actual record in government on progressive issues and explain how a party containing Phil Woolas and Frank Field can be progressive.

Childish

Utterly pathetic. Labour ceded all right to be called a progressive party when they decided to start bombing civilians, while making a bonfire of civil rights here. They’re not going to get back in until they show some sign of having learned a few important lessons.

“Labour ceded all right to be called a progressive party when they decided to start bombing civilians, while making a bonfire of civil rights here. They’re not going to get back in until they show some sign of having learned a few important lessons.”

Well said! What kind of message do they think they’re sending? “Vote Labour: we throw our toys out of the pram better than anybody.”

Clegg demanded Brown’s head on a spike as the price of coalition before deciding to join the Tories and developing a whole series of post hoc rationalisations as to why large swathes of LibDem policy were abandoned. Clegg will have a very hard time selling himself as a leader of a ‘progressive centre-left‘ coalition if Labour are the largest party after the next general election, whether it’s under AV, FTPT or RPS.* If there is a more left-inclined potential leader within the LibDems, they’ll have every incentive to bide their time and make their case for the leadership when the moment arrives. But we’ll only know for certain after 2015: Denham’s just chosen to get his retaliation in first.

*Familiar to schoolchildren as Rock Paper Scissors.

Correction: FPTP – damn! I’d new I’d get my abbreviations mixed up

…and my spelling

I have deep misgivings about the ConDem coalition, but given the state of the Labour party what other alternative WAS there exactly? In the immediate aftermath of the election I was amongst those who probably would have “preferred” a minority Tory administration (more on the basis that it would have been less corrosive for the LibDems).

It’s quite obvious however that too many people in the Labour leadership preferred a period of self flagellation and opposition to the hard work and compromises that might have kept the Tories out. The dismal state of the Labour party today only reinforces the view that New Labour was a ghastly mistake.

I agree with some previous contributors: we don’t need any lessons from the Labour party about being progressive, and they will no doubt change their tune pretty quickly come the next election if the electoral logic dictates that they should enter a coalition with the LibDems. Whether they can demand the head of Nick Clegg as a price rather depends on how strong a position they are in, and what happens to the coalition.

However queasy the coalition might make me feel, it’s a pretty damning indictment of New Labour that it sometimes sounds more progressive than they did over the past 13 years!

Clegg set his own precedent for this by insisting on the removal of Brown. I don’t see this as a threat, just a statement of reality – the electorate would just see it as wrong and deal-making for power’s sake if there was a Lab-Lib deal without serious change from the Liberal Democrats. That means either the Lib Dems would have to leave the coalition over a seriously unjust policy (difficult after swallowing the budget, privatisation of the NHS and axing BSF) or change their leader.

However in practice it’s not going to happen in the near future; the coalition partners seem willing to persist with each other & the numbers encourage them to do so.

Given that we are mostly likely five years away from the next general election, these threat from Labour MPs about refusing to deal with Clegg amount to no more than silly posturing – which rather tends to show just how intellectually bankrupt the Labour Party is.

Does Denham speak for Labour ?

#12

I don’t think it’s a threat – but anyhow you can’t win with this kind of question. You get criticised for not answering it if you sidestep it and you get criticised for silly posturing if you do answer it.

Hahahahahahahaha

I don’t think Denham has spotted that it is the LD’s who have the power in such situations, as we saw.

Childish AND stupid.

@15 cjcjc

Not necessarily. It is at least feasible that Labour could demand Clegg’s head as the price for agreeing a coalition after the next election…. sauce for the goose etc!

Its hypothetical and premature, but it seems abundantly clear to me that what Denham says would obviously be a political reality, though I can’t myself see that the LibDem MPs would be waiting for Labour to make the point

… It is not a hissy fit – it is the view of somebody who has been a long-standing advocate of PR and electoral reform (and who will campaign to AV) and is describing, when asked, the basis on which a future Lab-LibDem dialogue may come about.

He is quite clear it would take significant changes from Labour as well as the LibDems: you can read the reported comments in context here.
http://www.nextleft.org/2010/07/clegg-would-be-barrier-to-future-lab.html

Nick Clegg has succeeded in taking a united party into a Tory-LibDem coalition. Most of his party is committed to making that work. But it is a statement of the obvious that his own political future is now very strongly linked to the success of the Coalition, and it seems to me very difficult to envisage a strong public pitch from a post-coalition Clegg for the LibDems. It will therefore be Clegg’s argument (if, for example, parts of the party in Parliament, at local level and in Scotland are feeling much edgier after May 2011) that they must stick it out. That might well continue to persuade most LibDems, but his Parliamentary colleagues will naturally consider whether that is in their interests rather than in his.

Similarly, Clegg’s party will be much more cautious than Clegg and even more so than Cameron in joint public advocacy (take the party conference links issue) which seem to ‘merge’ the public appeal and profile of the parties into “the Coalition party”. There is lots in that for Cameron, a bit in that for Clegg (with risks) and not much in it for either the LibDems or the Tory MPs.

Certainly, the LibDems have been the most ruthless of the three parties in dispatching leaders in the last 5 years, and everybody at Westminster realises that this is an issue that will at some point be considered if there is a point when the party is thinking about whether the Coalition is in its interests.

Take these scenarios for a next General Election.

1. The Coalition is either explicitly running for re-election (mutual second preferences under AV) or that it appears implicit that the preference of the LibDems is that the Coalition should get back in.
– Nick Clegg is the obvious leader for the LibDems, to continue his project and articulate the case that the LibDems have made and making the progressive difference.

2. The Coalition has broken down, and there are mutual recriminations between the Conservatives and LibDems about whose fault it was. The parties are preparing to fight an election against each other

– Would the LibDems have Nick Clegg making that argument, or would they think they would be better off having it led by somebody who had not been the public face of the Clegg-Cameron coalition? It may depend on the nature of the breakdown, but I think amicable divorce scenarios are rather difficult to put together in a pre-election context.

3. In a future General Election there is a hung Parliament outcome which means that there is a viable Labour-LibDem option which most LibDem MPs want to take.

– For reasons above, I personally doubt Clegg will have led them into an election where that is a possible outcome. Imagine that is possible. Leaving aside Labour’s views, would the LibDems think Clegg was a credible public advocate of such a Coalition?

It’s just stating political reality as I see it. And John Denham is a far-sighted and extremely intelligent MP.

But I do think this is a bit premature. It looks bad.

Coalition governments are a regular feature of German politics and that doesn’t prevent each of the three (or four or five)* main parties there running on their own party specific platforms at general elections despite having been part of a previous coalition.

The German political system is not inherently unstable. What does sometimes effectively prevent governments there from progressing their preferred legislation is the presence of an elected upper house – the Bundesrat – in which the governing coalition may not have a majority. Unlike the House of Lords, the Bundesrat does have powers to block government legislation.

* Christian Democrats, Critian Social Union in Bavaria, Social Democrats, Free Democrats and Greens.

German parties normally make clear their preferred coalition partner before the election. (The FDP seem to have strongly preferred the CDU for a long time now.) Lib Dems have hitherto failed to do so, instead saying they’ll back whichever party was more popular (though, interestingly, few people seemed to believe them, and many assumed a Lib Dem/Tory deal was impossible). Perhaps next time it’ll be different.

Sunder is living in a fantasy world, projecting his politics onto the Libdems. Can I say how it looks from the inside ?
We have signed a contract & as long as the Tories keep their side we will stick to it.
Whatever happens, in 2015 Tories & Libdems will stand as seperate Parties. We will not be telling our voters where to put their 2nd & 3rd preferences, we beleive they can think for themselves.
After the election we will try to get the best deal for our voters, its pointless speculating now what that might be. The idea we might dump our leader as the price of a deal is fantasy, unlike Brown we elected Clegg.

@21 Paul

“The idea we might dump our leader as the price of a deal is fantasy, unlike Brown we elected Clegg.”

You can’t possibly know that at this stage. Irrespective of the fact Clegg was elected, the LD’s would knife him in the back sooner than they did other leaders of recent memory if there was a strong enough rationale for doing so.

Why would you think that the LD’s wouldn’t do it in a situation, just for the sake of argument, where Labour offered a coalition deal on the basis that Clegg had to go as leader? It may not seem that likely now, but who knows what the situation will be 5 years from now… or even earlier if the coalition founders?

I fully accept what you say about the LibDems being pretty united, and that demonstrates Clegg’s successful leadership in achieving that in May. It is possible, but not I think certain, the party will remain as united on this in Autumn 2011, Spring/Autumn 2012 and so on, but that depends on it continuing to believe the Coalition serves their future political interests.

Since LibDems also elected Charles Kennedy and Ming Campbell but the Parliamentary Party/shadow Cabinet de-elected them. It seems very clear that the membership can’t save a party leader if their Parliamentary colleagues decide otherwise. Perhaps you think Nick Clegg has much more affection than Charles Kennedy did among the grassroots, but even if that were the case he will need to maintain a consensus among MPs that they will collectively benefit from his leadership. That’s just basic political reality, and of course he will be aware of this. The Ming Campbell case was clearly based on reading the political context, not personal circumstances.

I suspect that, at the next election, it will be much clearer than at the last one whether the LibDems would be in favour of a further term of Tory-LD coalition given the opportunity, or not. The idea of going through a 2014-2015 election without Clegg’s position on that being fairly clear seems to me very unlikely. My further suggestion is that the decision about whether or not Clegg is the right leader for the LibDems at the next election might well be based on whether the party wants to strongly challenge the Conservatives, or to essentially offer a competing but also complementary manifesto. I don’t myself see that Clegg will be able to do the former, though he will be very well placed to do the latter. Clegg’s continued leadership seems to me based on making an at least implicit public case that “vote Clegg, get Cameron” has delivered, and could deliver again in future if the voters want it, even if you don’t know you will make that choice after the result (or that the Tories won’t be in a position to ditch you, etc).

If the LibDems have moved away from that, I can’t see any massive party barrier to the MPs putting say Chris Huhne or Vince Cable or AN other in instead, and then saying all options are again open, and that the 2010 coalition was a product of the specific choices and circumstances of that result. Unlike Clegg, they would not face a public campaign dominated by everything they have said about how much they have in common with David Cameron.

If you have AV, you can choose not to make any recommendations to voters about their preferences, and candidates’ can refuse to say what they will do themselves (just as Brian Paddick secretly voted SWP in London in 2008) but it does suggest an interesting difficulty with the pluralist politics the party advocates.

How dare a politician speak honestly and up front in language people understand!

Doesn’t he know that is…

childish and stupid
intellectually bankrupt
silly posturing
utterly pathetic
throwing a hissy fit.
Etc.

I mean seriously guys. He’s one politician expressing a view that is actually pretty widespread and common sense.

Read the Inde article. It isn’t very long. He expressed the quite sensible view, when asked, that the Lib Dems and Labour are very different. Surely we all agree with that. Right now they agree on just about nothing.

I mean think about it – Labour are presently most angry about the housing benefit change. That change is designed to force poor people from wealthy areas into existing poor ghettos. Dame Shirley Porter has effectively won. It will work brilliantly and the price of that will be huge temporary accommodation costs and homelessness skyrocketing.

Lib Dems believe in that change. They voted for it. It is a price worth paying.

So change would be needed for Labour to deal with them.

I find it very hard to envisage the prospect of Clegg and the Libdems flip-flopping around between the Tories and Labour again. Indeed there wasn’t really any flip-floping this time. There was no real prospect of a Libdem/Labour government with or without Brown. If the next election is FPTP, a hung parliament is unlikely. If it is AV, I think the Libdems will have to declare who they will work with. People will want to have some idea what they are voting for as a Libdem/Lab govt will be very different from a Libdem/Con govt.

Do I hear an AV+ from the man in the blue tie?

Going…. going…

No, it’s an STV bid from the man in the red tie!

Gone to the man in the red tie!

Richard P: German parties normally make clear their preferred coalition partner before the election. – which means if Clegg declared ‘I choose Dave’, only to find he can only get a majority with whoever is leading Labour, he’ll be toast. But that’s still a long way off.

“t’s just stating political reality as I see it.”

I don’t really see it as political reality. Imagine the following scenario next election – lib dems increase vote but there is still a hung parliament – how credible is a demand to remove Clegg under this scenario?

Even without electoral reform the 2 party system is dead. The UK has 6 parties (counting the scottish and welsh nats as one, and ignoring NI entirely) that now regularly win seats in westminster, europe and the devolved governments. This means coalitions are far more likely than they were, and therefore all the parties are going to have to be more grown up about things. Plus if this government is a success (and by 2014 recovery may well be secure, the cuts will be focused on labour voters anyway, and a nice tax bribe may well secure middle england ) then coalition governments are de-toxified in the eyes of the public and the conservative party.

This is more about labour tribalism, trying to monopolise opposition and baiting lib dems. Instead of blaming lib dems for taking the only realistic option on the table, they’d be better off figuring out why labour voters deserted the party in droves post 2003 – and here’s a clue – it wasn’t because labour failed to adhere to the daily mail line enough.

“Political reality” is precisely what this is not about. Denham is forgetting (or choosing to forget) that there was a very specific reason for Clegg not wanting to deal with Brown: because Brown was widely considered to be a failed Prime Minister, and propping him up would saddle any putative LibLab coalition from the outset. He was simply a political liability.

Of course, it may well become the case that Clegg as an individual leader is as unpopular and as widely regarded as a failure as Brown was by 2015, and any coalition featuring him would start life with an albatross round its neck. In which case, depending on the circs, I can quite see why Labour might make an equivalent demand (and why Lib Dems might too). *That* would be one sort of political reality that could result in Clegg’s exit. There may be others too. But they don’t include Labour not liking him because he’s Mr Howible Howible Nasty-Pants.

Though this view does seem to constitute pretty much the whole of Labour’s political reality right now, so I can see why they’re confused.

Alix

Thing is – you are talking pure party strategy. Brown was an electoral liability so Clegg wouldn’t deal. Labour might deal with Clegg if he wasn’t an electoral liability.

Denham is talking policy and principle. He doesn’t say that if they got rid of clegg labour would deal. He says labour wouldn’y deal unless the Lib Dems changed a lot. Not just a leader. Their policy positions on huge swathes of what they now believe in.

In effect – a Lib Dem party comfortable with the recent budget is not one Labour could work with. It would be infeasible as they are polls apart in what they believe is right and wrong.

Which of course partly emphasises how much more the Lib Dems already had in common with the Tories when it came to their core beliefs before the election. Their economic liberalism and their individual liberalism fit the tories quite well. It doesn’t fit with a Labour party that believes in re-distribution and universal services.

I should admit my bias btw

I never placed much hope in the Lib Dems as part of a long term coalition of the Left. Their libertarian stance was always closer to right wing thinking on a small state and not intervening in people’s lives.

The Greens and Labour (when they are brave enough to act on) always held my hopes for a long term social democratic coalition. (The congestion charge, free meals for schoolchildren, the minimum wage for those who wonder)

A coalition of Greens and Labour under PR would help Labour be brave and would bring through valuable radical Green ideas.

But alas, Clegg will no doubt be happy to see AV continue to styfle smaller parties than his. After all, it goes unsaid that his party already benefits from Green voters having no say under FPTP and so vote Lib Dem.

And that’s the biggest shame of all.

“In effect – a Lib Dem party comfortable with the recent budget is not one Labour could work with. ”

Look. Mate. *If* coalitions become the norm and *if* it looks as if the collective decision of the voters indicates a LibLab coalition as a viable and widely desired way forward, then they’re just going to have to learn to rub along, I’m afraid. That’s what coalitions – and democracy, come to that – are about. It’s no eggs to me whether this happens in five years’ time or twenty, but if coalition governments are going to be even an occasional feature of the political landscape, then Labour will tackle that learning curve at some point.

This is, of course, what none of youse want to hear, which is presumably why Denham is saying this now. He knows Labour’s rotten record in government is a massive stumbling block to holding the party together, and he (and others) is looking for every possible way to evoke a sense of unity.

Alix

I want coalition politics. I love the idea of two left wing parties keeping eachother honest and ambitious. Hence I desperately want a second left wing party like the Greens to rise under a more proportional system.

But lets be clear, things move to coalition politics sooner rather than later, and with AV rather than a proportional system, then we have to accept there is unlikely to be a left wing coalition option available to us. We’ll be stuck with right wing politics for a long time to come.

Unless the Lib Dems change dramatically from their present state. I guess they might. I just don’t trust a party, and this is true of a lot of Greens and Labour supporters, that argues the horrendous suffering of the poor is a price worth paying – be it for corporation tax cuts, AV and a rise in the income tax threshold now, or the radical move to a smaller state that the tories pre-1997 moved towards.

Alix

We should also say that for all Labour’s successes and faults – they are hardly tearing themselves appart. 33% in the polls is not a terrible base from which to build. The leadership contest is hardly fractious aside from a bit round the edges. Certainly nothing like the hatred and bile within the tory party ten years ago.

And I personally think that might be because Blair achieved something more than we realised while he was in power. He wanted to reverse the 20th century. He wanted Labour to be a party of the centre that would dominate government long term as the tories did for 100 years. And to do that he wanted to drive the Tories right so they would only have short radical spells in government before being thrown out again.

Given the quick march to the laissez-faire right that the Tories have taken since getting their hands on the treasury – I’m not convinced he failed at that.

That’s not great news for those of us who hope for a braver left in government. But it means the party is probably, just like the tories of the 20th century, going to rally fairly strongly against the severe policies of their opponents.