A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

Monday, February 05, 2007

What would happen in a hung parliament?

Mike Smithson of Politicalbetting.com has asked, from a Lib Dem perspective, what would the Lib Dems do in a hung parliament?

I can only speak from a Labour perspective. My instinct is that if we were the largest party but had no majority, we would try to struggle on as a minority government, and dare the other parties to risk irritating the electorate by triggering a second election with a confidence vote.

If we are not the largest party it will be game over anyway.

I cannot visualise circumstances where Brown (or his sucessor?) would consider a coalition with the Lib Dems because to do so would cause so much anger in the PLP and wider party - one of the things that unites almost all Labour MPs and activists is hatred for the Lib Dems, largely brought on themselves by the opportunist way they campaign at a local level.

The tiny number of enthusiasts for Lib/Labery who advocated it in the run-up to 1997 may have had influence then but won't under the more tribal Brown - and after ten years of the Lib Dems undermining a Labour government.

I assume the Tories don't trust them any more than we do.

So really the question is not so much what would the Lib Dems do in a hung parliament? as "would the Lib Dems vote down a minority government formed by the largest party, or would they not risk a second election?"

1 Comments:

Blogger Chris Paul said...

There is an 18 Doughty Street movie on this. Projecting Labour with a 1 seat majority over Tories and the Lib Dems going blue.

There would surely NOT have to be a second election Luke and I suspect that you know this.

Labour Queens Speech voted down. Queen asks someone else to from a government. No irritating second election.

A little less angling for swing voters in a few seats and more care for public service workers, those in the more derelict and disadvantaged SOAs, pensioners, the relatively low paid (who are always with us) and tribal supporters in general IS NOT the same as making Labour unelectable.

Carrying on angling and neglecting the nets may be a far better way to "end it all" than that.

12:53 am, February 08, 2007

 

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