James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
Doing the media rounds this morning, both David Laws and Michael Gove have said that they do not know which one of them will be education secretary in the Cameron Clegg government. But judging from what I’m hearing, last night’s media reports that Gove would not be education secretary appear to have been premature.
The Lib Dems are holding a meeting of both their MPs and the Federal Executive at 7.30pm. It is now widely expected that this meeting will approve a coalition deal with the Conservatives. Those who have taken the temperature of the Lib Dem Federal Executive say that approval is in the bag.
The main development of this morning has been Labour MPs throwing up obstacles to a Lib Lab deal. At the moment there are four main problems. First, David Blunkett and others arguing that Labour would be better off going into opposition and—this is implicit—letting the Tories and the Lib Dems make the cuts. One union
I am told that one of the Lib Dems groups most opposed to doing a deal with the Tories was its Scottish MPs. Their view was that Scotland had voted massively against the Tories and that any party seen as their representatives in Scotland would be massacred. This has set off chatter in Tory circles.
Well, well today just keeps getting more and more extraordinary. The Tories have responded to the Lib Dems beginning formal negotiations with Labour by offering the Lib Dems a referendum on AV in exchange for a full coalition with Lib Dems in the Cabinet. The Tories stress that this is their final offer to the
Gordon Brown’s announcement that the Liberal Democrats have requested formal coalition talks is the best news that the Conservative party has had since the polls closed on Thursday. David Cameron can now say that his party has negotiated in good faith and that his broad, comprehensive, and open offer to the Lib Dems is on
The shadow Cabinet were gathering before their meeting at 2pm. One member told me ‘it is looking less like formal coalition now.’ But coalition remains the leadership’s preferred option. Talking to Tory MPs—old and new—this morning, there’s a sense that they would slightly prefer minority government. Though, no-one is planning to blow themselves up if
‘A government by this evening’ is what several Tory MPs have told me they expect. Those who have spoken to David Cameron say that he has no appetite for a second election within 12 months and that he wants the stability of a coalition. David Cameron is in the House of Commons. When I passed
Patrick Wintour reports in The Guardian tonight that Nick Clegg thinks that the talks between the Tories and the Lib Dems have only 24 hours to run before the public loses patience. This suggests that tomorrow night has become the unofficial deadline for a deal to be agreed. On the Tory side, David Cameron would
As the BBC reports that David Cameron has arrived at the negotiations between the Tories and the Lib Dems it is worth taking a look at the Tory negotiating team. It has been put together to try and maximise the prospects of a deal. Ed Llewellyn, who worked for Paddy Ashdown in Bosnia and is close friends
When the leadership reassuresConservatives that there’ll be no PR, they mean that Britain will not end up with a different voting system. When senior MPs tell the leadership that PR is a red-line, they mean a referendum on PR is unacceptable. As I say in the Mail on Sunday, those close to the leadership are
Talk of coalition between parties always reminds people that all political parties are internal coalitions. So all this speculation about Cabinet jobs for the Lib Dems, has set off some grumbling on the right of the Tory party. The right has long thought that shadow Cabinet is unbalanced. They point out that there are only
James Forsyth reviews the week in politics ‘He who controls the past, controls the future’ as George Orwell reminded us. This means that a battle breaks out in every party after every election to explain the result, to determine which policies helped and which policies hindered. Win or lose, the various factions inside parties race
Gordon Brown has done two smart things today. The first was to make public what his offer to the Lib Dems was, meaning that every Lib Dem MP knew what it was before their party meeting tomorrow morning. This increases the pressure on the leadership not to do a deal with the Conservatives that does
The Tories have come up short and even a deal with the DUP and Sinn Fein continuing not to take their seats would not give them a majority. So, we are now into proper hung parliament territory. So far, we haven’t heard from Cameron since his speech after being re-elected as MP for Witney. But
I have just been looking at the last wave of polling done for Euro RSCG, who have done much of the advertising for the Tories. The polling, done by one of the big polling firms, was carried out on Tuesday and Wednesday. It shows that 49% of those surveyed expect Cameron to be Prime Minister
All the polls tonight are in hung parliament territory. But judging from what I’m hearing tonight, it is the Tories who have been cheered by these polls. The first hurdle for Cameron to get over is having the most seats and votes. If they achieve that, then Clegg’s previous statements mean that the Tories would
There’s an odd disconnect at the moment. Pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to predicts that the Tories will win 300 seats plus (the one exception was someone on the Union side who thought that they could hold the Tories to 280) but the polls show them winning significantly less than that. Now, this is
I’ve been passed some rather interesting polling. It’s been done for Euro RSCG, the Tories’ lead advertising agency, and is based on a sample size of 2,000 and is, what they call in the trade, momentum polling. The idea is that you ask people which party they think is gaining ground and which is losing
Michael Crick has just blogged about a ‘strange quirk in the British political system.’ Writing about a Lib Dem councillor he says ‘interestingly, because she is a Danish citizen, double-councillor Lockington isn’t just disqualified from standing as a candidate in the coming general election, she can’t even vote in it.’ But what seems strange to