This week brought the “revelation” that Nick Clegg insisted on Gordon Brown’s head as the price of a Lab-Lib coalition but could Labour turn the tables on the Lib Dems at the next election?
Should Labour emerge as the single largest party in a hung parliament, many will want to force Clegg’s departure before any coalition is formed. In an interview in the latest edition of Fabian Review, John Denham, the shadow communities secretary, suggests that Labour could not work with a Clegg-led Lib Dem party:
It would require a new leader and a new politics. The idea that the Lib Dems can do this now, and then, in a few years, say they’d like to be friends with Labour when they are fundamentally unchanged is out of the question. Many people, including electoral reformers like me who always thought there could be a centre-left coalition with the Lib Dems, have to understand they have taken a historic position which puts them outside that game until they change profoundly.
That Denham, a Labour pluralist who supported attempts to form a “progressive coalition”, feels this way suggests that many others in the party do, too. For now, the Lib Dems remain surprisingly united behind Clegg. As Richard Grayson points out in his cover story for the latest issue, the trauma of losing Charles Kennedy and Ming Campbell in quick succession has made the Liberal Democrats extremely leadership-loyal.
But Clegg’s fate is now almost entirely intertwined with that of the coalition, which could leave him dangerously exposed if, as expected, the forthcoming spending cuts make the government rapidly unpopular. Should the Lib Dems suffer significant losses in the May 2011 local elections, we will start to hear the first proper rumblings of discontent.
Either way, it makes sense for Labour to begin planning war-gaming scenarios for a hung parliament now. So which Lib Dem figure could replace Clegg and win over a rejuvenated Labour Party? Step forward, Charles Kennedy.
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