I know it's just a coincidence...

[ffutures]

...but the BBC reporter currently describing Gordon Brown's resignation is called Ian Watson, and I keep expecting to hear the dulcet tones of the SF author.

If the LIb Dems do end up in bed with Cameron, which seems to be what's about to happen, above and beyond possibly agreeing not to block the Queen's speech, it will be a cold day in hell before they get my vote again.

Comments

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

What are the chances of a Labour LibDem union government lead by PM Clegg?

[ggreig]

Now zero, for this parliament at least.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

None - Cameron is about to visit the Queen and form the new government. It may be a minority government, it may be a Conservative / Lib-Dem alliance.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

And if they ended up in bed with New Labour they wouldn't get mine.

It all depends on how much they have managed to wring out of Cameron, who, I suspect, was not in the least sorry to give up the inheritance tax promise (which is what, according to BBC rumour, he has done) because I suspect that that was always a sop to his right wing.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

A cold cold day in hell.

I think Nick Clegg might just be the man who goes down in history as taking the LIb Dems from nothing, to having a third of the share of the popular vote in polls, to destroying the entire party in the space of a week.

[pmcray.livejournal.com]

>>>it will be a cold day in hell before they get my vote again

Me too. The notion that the LDs will be extract anything out of the Tories except perhaps a commission on electoral reform strikes me as absurd.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

But they never got your vote anyway...

At last a chance for the Liberals to govern

[pmcray.livejournal.com]

Well, much more of a chance for the Tories to govern.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it's the death-knell for the party - they're inevitably going to move a lot closer to the Tories, unless something dramatic changes things. For the long-term future they would have done better to keep the faith with voters; stay in opposition but work with Labour to block the worst excesses of the Conservatives.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

The problem with that scenario is that you assume the Conservatives would try and form a minority Government by themselves and that is not a certainty. Looking at it rationally, their best option would be for the Conservatives to sit back, leave Gordon Brown as a dead-duck PM and prevent him from doing anything substantive legislatively speaking. Any attempt to get him out with a no-confidence vote could be defeated with abstentions by the super-minority Conservatives requiring the Labour Party en masse to actually kill their own government by voting against their leader. If called on this Cameron could simply point out that the Lib Dems had refused to work with the Conservatives so they could not go to the Queen and offer to form a government to replace Labour as they didn't have a working majority in Parliament.

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I agree with that.

If they made an agreement for not very much - you'd have a point.

But they seem to have got a referendum and deputy PM out of the Tories - perhaps even more. Which is more then I expected. So now it's sit back and see what happens ....

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I will need a lot of convincing.

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

Understandable - hate the tories with a burning passion. This morning for the first time ever I'm working for them. Which burns.

But - the lib dems must be able to form a coalition government with other major parties if government is going to make sense. This is even more true once we have PR.

[w00hoo.livejournal.com]

Indeed, if they can't work together now, where is the proof that they'd stand any chance of working together under any form of PR? It's perverse, but surely the best chance for getting political reform is for them to work together in coalition and prove that it would be a viable form of government.

I can't see how either the option of refusing to work together at all, or the option of working just until a referendum happens and then pushing a no confidence vote would work in the favour of PR. It'll just push the electorate in to a position where they feel they have to have one of the big two because otherwise it's just a circle of defeats and no government at all. While that has its temptations, realistically wouldn't it be a Very Bad Thing at the moment..?

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

> Ian Watson

I saw a racing driver called Michael Caine yesterday *and* "The Italian Job".