This isn’t English

‘The Tories are stuffed,’ a resigned Shadow Cabinet minister tells Gary Gibbon. Endorsing any such view is premature but, with Lib Dem elders counselling Clegg to join Labour, the most likely outcome is a coalition of the losers, albeit nice progressive ones.

Ah, the irony of the New Politics – plus ca change and all that. Politics has descended into a grotesque spectacle of blackmail, and bungled devolution is to blame. As James reported last night, talks with the Tories ran aground on sands that are the territory of Holyrood and Scottish Liberals presented every obstacle possible. Plaid MPs prostitute themselves at a £100 million a piece and Northern Ireland’s political parties and funding will be dealt with as a block, which means that the progressive coalition will have to cosy up to Sinn Fein and the DUP while the English taxpayer foots the bill.

This morning, the SNP’s Angus Robertson presented an amuse bouche of a stable government, reliant on appeasing the Celtic fringe:

“Well, 85 percent of voters in Scotland did not vote for the Conservative Party, and the idea that we could have a coalition cobbled between the third and fourth parties – because that is what they are the Tories and Lib Dems are in Scotland – would be totally unacceptable.”