Labour reach out to the Lib Dems (again)

Heartless P.

I believe the accepted expression is LOL!

Rhoda Klapp

Yeah, they could call it the Lib-Lab pact.

Julian F

Happily, it is the gift of the Prime Minister alone to determine whether to enter into fresh Treaty negotiations, so this is simply whistling in the wind.

Dave B

The coalition government is a tax/borrow and spend government. There are no cuts in total government spending, and there will be no cuts in total government spending. The main difference between the three parties is their logos.

HampsteadOwl

Seems like odd politics from Alexander and Labour. Nothing will come of it since the Libs are stuck in the coalition whether they like it or not and yet it underlines Labour's position as a "pro-European" party. With the country in increasingly bellicose mood over Europe, Labour's electoral advantage might have lain in a drift towards a more Eurosceptic position

Fred Forsythe-notthe

Hang him on a Christmas tree in Parliament Square with an elf's cap on, a candle where the sun don't shine and a pair of earings made from thirty pieces of silver.

Archibald

Douglas Alexander personifies all that is wrong with UK politics. He is the archetypal Boy Who Cried Wolf. As soon as he opens his mouth you can be sure that he's about to angrily spout a bucket of Labour Head Office approved spin that demonizes the Tories, blissfully unaware that in most cases his party are either very similar in policy, exactly the same or (most ludicrous of all given his usual faux anger) undecided. He cannot see beyond puerile point scoring. This is his modus operandi. My advice - whenever the little darling opens his mouth, assume it's either to release a lie, some spin, or both.

Jeremy

So he, Nick Clegg, goes on "in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent."

The quoted words are those of Sir Winston Churchill.

toco

Is this the same wee Dougie Alexander who does the Co-op food adverts and whose sister had to resign in Scotland under dubious circumstances?Funny Balls and Cooper are keeping their heads down given the former's Nazi dressing-up antics which were apparently a non Labour trait.

David Lindsay

On the Today programme, Guy Verhofstadt, known in his day as "Baby Thatcher", clearly assumed that any Liberal would be in favour of a legally binding restriction of deficit spending to three per cent of GDP, and therefore that that was the root of support for the Euro Pact on the part of Lib Dems.

What he could not comprehend was why anyone from the Liberalised Conservative Party that idolises Alfred Roberts's daughter could possibly have been against such a restriction. Nor, for that matter, can I. Tories, Gaullists and Christian Democrats, you could understand, indeed expect. But none of the parties using those monikers today in Britain, France and Germany is really any such thing at leadership level, and everyone knows it.

On the part of Nick Clegg, a Continental Liberal who knows little or nothing about either Liberalism or Social Democracy in Britain, Verhofstadt was right. But the rest of that other Baby Thatcher's party needs to ask itself why it is so devoted, not only to him, but also to a legislative body which meets in secret and publishes no Official Report, to the legislative will of the assorted illiberal anti-democrats who turn up both in that body and in the European Parliament, to the Common Agricultural Policy, to the Common Fisheries Policy (which hits many of their constituencies particularly hard - no wonder that UKIP has topped the poll for Strasbourg twice in a row in Cornwall, including when that county was returning only Lib Dems to Westminster), and to everything from the Maastricht convergence criteria to the latest legally binding restriction of deficit spending to three per cent of GDP.

Both the Liberal Party and the SDP still exist.

Dave Page

The devil will be in the detail, as always. The last time the Lib Dems and Labour discussed a coalition, in May 2010, Labour were divided.

They didn't know what their own policies were, revealing the 50/50 split on AV we'd eventually see in the referendum despite their manifesto commitment. They expected the Lib Dems to sign up to the Labour manifesto without any liberal concessions.

If they attempt such a confused course of action again, the Lib Dems will reject them, Clegg or no Clegg.

xenophon

Hmm. So Alexander has his eye on gathering under Labour's wing the support of the Lib Dems, sans Clegg as you say. Has he tried to calculate how much that support is going to amount to in terms of MPs after the next election?

Mycroft

So wee Dougie's going to save our bacon ny oiling up to Johnnie Foreigner; and doubtless get his due reward from the electorate.

2trueblue

Time for an election.
The real facts of the so called agreement will come to light in the coming months and the UK will not be the only one to question what is going on. The lack of democracy and loss of soverignity is now becoming more visible that the price of belonging to the gang is clear.
You can fool some of the people some of the time............

Cynic

"Just because he puts party interest before the national interest, there is no reason others should do the same." Party interest before national interest? That would be why so many LibDem voters supported Cameron's action in the poll, would it?

Occasional Ostrich

Archibald 13th, 8:25pm

"My advice - whenever the little darling opens his mouth, assume it's either to release a lie, some spin, or both."

What makes you think that there are any among us who hadn't already reached that conclusion?

Cynic

"The concern for Clegg, though, is that these overtures start to appeal to other Lib Dems. Were that to happen, more and more of his party might think it's time for a change of leader: not just to escape from the Tories and their Euroscepticism ..." Judging by the comments on Cif in the Guardian, the LibDems have been abandoned by Labour supporters and even by some of their own voters. Also judging by the polls, many LibDem voters (as distinct from MPs) are not fully signed up to the EU. I should imagine those LibDems in the south-west are as eurosceptic as the Tories. Let's not forget that before the election, the LibDems were calling for "a real referendum on Europe".

TrevorsDen

Tories either in lead or level in 4 polls.

escapedRoger

Reading The New Statesman can make you go mad, Baaaa! Seriously, it's rubbish for pseuds.

paulo

If voting Libdem means no more than being in a coalition of convenience as the political whore of one of the other major parties, to suffer the brickbats and get none of the glory anyhow, then many potential Libdem voters ought to consider abandoning this cowardly political choice and voting for a real alternative.

They don't stand for anything definitive anyhow.

Colin Cumner

If there was a Lab-LibDem alliance they would surely be consigned to the political wilderness for years to come. Goody, bring it on, I say.

michael

A genuine offer... in a trash-mag
I smell a bit of entrepreneurial opportunism,
brought on by adrenalin, the hormonal response to fear. It must be the reality of who is really becoming isolated.

Nicholas

I see the Lib Dems are at the forefront of trying to introduce another New Labour type subjective law for domestic violence to tackle "controlling partners" where no violence has even occurred. Perhaps they should extend this to "controlling partners" in coalition governments and get themselves prosecuted too.

When is this legislation by minorities and pressure groups going to stop?

H D

As a Lib-Dem I certainly don't want to contemplate "getting into bed"with Labour at any future date.It's bad enough now when(to continue the analogy)the Tories keep hogging the duvet!

Frank Leader

If Scotland gains Independence Wee Duggie will be relegated to Scotland: Together with all the other Scottish MPs. We will also be able to kick Brown out of England for good. Labour's built in electoral atvantage will be removed. Pop-eyes Balls and unwashed Red Ed should then be in permanent opposition, thats the best place for them.

alexsandr

Frank Leader@ December 14th, 2011 8:46am
Why do you want them in opposition. I would have thought attending the jobcentre once a fortnight would be a better role for them.

Tom Burroughes

Some of the more thoughtful "orange book" LibDems must ask themselves as to whether they really want to get into bed with a party of socialists. As for the rest of the Liberal Democrats, their reflexive hostility to free markets, private property rights and their disdain for Britain's status as an independent, sovereign entity means they cannot be trusted as coalition allies. If they want to pitch in with the party that gave us such titans as Gordon Brown and Ed Balls, they are welcome.

If the economy were a bit stronger, I am convinced David Cameron could call an election and win outright. Alas, it appears his freedom for action in that regard has now gone.

michael

The Lali-crats... sounds suitably crass.

michael

'crass', sorry, I meant feral

Bob Low

An attack from Douglas Alexander against a political party for placing their own political interests before the interests of the nation would be funny, if it weren't so utterly nauseating. Alexander, lest we forget, was one of the Bright New Labour Boys who decided, for reasons of naked political self interest, to foist a devolution settlement on the Scottish people-a settlement voted for by less than half of the electorate. Such democratic niceties were and continue to be of little interest to Alexander and his cronies. They saw Scottish Devolution as a method of liquidating the SNP, and thus ensuring the continuance of the thousand year Blair Reich. Eight years of craven, greedy and utterly useless Labour led coalitions were enough to persuade the few Scots who still bother to vote that Independence might not be so bad after all. As right-leaning Scot-something of an endangered species up here- I had extremely mixed feelings about the Scottish election results in May- delight at seeing so many Labour donkeys slaughtered at the polls, tempered by apprehension about where this is going to leave the UK constitution. Alexander and his mob were quite happy tp play dangerous games with the UK constitution for the advantage of their own party-and should never be allowed to forget the fact-and be under no illusions that Alexander would return to an Independent Scotland.I would like to think that we wouldn't have him, or his equally contemptable sister, back.

WIlliam Blakes Ghost

My message to Lib Dems would be that, over the next few years, the public will reward politicians who show serious statesmanship, not shrill showmanship in the face of economic events none of us has witnessed before and the outcome of which remains uncertain.’

Yep the public will reward the statesmen over the shrill showman. Ironic that in the last week the Conservatives have taken the lead in the ICM, Yougov and Mori polls (jumping 7 points in the later). Clearly they know that Clegg and Miliband are nothing but shrill showman (and not very good ones at that).....

I expect Alexanders prediction is as ominous and hilariously worong as those made by Sion Simon in the New Statesman in September 2007