More Lib-Lab fun and games
Peter Hoskin 2:01pm
Nick Clegg does seem to be keeping busy. After his excellent work during the Gurkha vote, which incorporated the first outing of the Clegg-Cameron coalition, today's Telegraph contains this revelation:
Now, I'm not saying it's likely we'll see mass defections after the election. But the post-Brown era certainly threatens to be a bloody one for Labour. Aside from all the usual post election wound-licking, we have a party which has been terminally factional, even in power, and which contains some of the dirtiest operators in politics. So it's little wonder if some Labour MPs are making contingency plans. In the meantime, count this as yet another embarrassing story for Brown."Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, has privately authorised secret approaches to unhappy Blairites, trying to persuade them to join the Lib Dems instead of forming their own breakaway party.One Lib Dem said: 'There is nothing imminent or even concrete, but there have been conversations with people on what you might call the moderate side of the Labour Party.
They look at the likely outcome of the election and worry about the direction the party could take.'
Another Lib Dem source said at least six Labour MPs had indicated that they could be prepared to leave the party. Earlier this week Daniel Clarke, the Labour candidate in Eastleigh, Hants, defected to the Lib Dems saying Labour was 'no longer committed to realising the dreams of people like me'."
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Rhoda Klapp
May 2nd, 2009 2:16pm Report this commentIf the LDs are going to simultaneously recruit a bunch of blairite Labs and also join with the tories in a coalition, that will certainly work toward a sloppy soft-left-centre conflation which will please the political class, but it will do nothing for democracy. We need parties with some sort of principle. Don't we? Who will speak for the people who don't like the EU, immigration, loss of liberty and all the other features of Blair's Britain?
Anton Howes
May 2nd, 2009 2:31pm Report this commentIt says a lot about how liberal the LibDems are if Labour MPs (generally into social engineering) can even consider joining them.
It also sounds a bit like Labour's in terminal decline, much like the Liberals in the early 20th Century. If they still manage (somehow) to win, it would be like 1906 all over again.
The question is, who would replace them as a force in politics like the fledgling Labour party once replaced the Liberals?
RobTheBassman
May 2nd, 2009 3:04pm Report this commentI think Clegg should be very careful about accepting any Labour MPs. If their reason for jumping ship is to forestall a visit to the jobcentre after years of meekly following the whips' orders, they will not deserve to continue at the trough. People who might otherwise vote LD could well be put off by such opportunism.
David Lindsay
May 2nd, 2009 3:31pm Report this commentSomewhat ironically considering that John Cleese used to do Party Political Broadcasts for the SDP, there is now something of a "don't mention the War" attitude to that party.
Could it be because, when so many of today's media grandees were Communists or Trotskyists and entirely open about it, the SDP was trying, however imperfectly, to provide a home for those whom they had driven out of Labour?
And the SDP was very imperfect. Apparently unable to see that the unions were where the need for a broad-based, sane opposition to Thatcherism was greatest, it was hysterically hostile to them, and instead made itself dependent on a single donor, later made a Minister by Blair without the rate for the job.
It had betrayed Gaitskellism over Europe, betrayed Christian Socialism (and, lest we forget, Gaitskellism) over nuclear weapons, adopted the decadent social libertinism of Roy Jenkins, and adopted the comprehensive schools mania of Shirley Williams.
But even so.
Death or Tory
May 2nd, 2009 3:55pm Report this comment"They look at the likely outcome of the election and worry about the direction the party could take."
Yeah, right...
They are looking at the likely outcome of the next GE and realise that most of them are virtually unemployable outside of Westminster at their current level of salary and perks.
The old adage of 'if you can't beat them, join them...' is what is driving these whingeing excuses of humankind - as for the future direction of the Labour Party, they care not a jot...
The retention of MPs salary and perks is what matters to these 'defectors' and the colour of the rosette they have to wear to achieve this aim is totally irrelevant.
No wonder politics is now viewed with such distain...
Kevyn Bodman
May 2nd, 2009 5:08pm Report this commentRhoda,
I think the best bet is LPUK.
I'm not 100% with them, but they're the closest I've found to what I want.
Stitch-ups by the political class, as the Clegg discussions aspire to be, are not in Britain's best interests.
David Ossitt
May 2nd, 2009 7:20pm Report this comment"Earlier this week Daniel Clarke, the Labour candidate in Eastleigh, Hants, defected to the Lib Dems saying Labour was 'no longer committed to realising the dreams of people like me'."
I WOULD LIKE TO TRANSLATE THE ABOVE GARBAGE.
He thinks labour is doomed and so he must emulate a rat and leave the sinking ship but to move to the "Lib Dems" what a plonker!
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