Is Clegg’s head no longer the price of a Labour-Lib Dem coalition?

Harriet Harman suggests that Ed Miliband would not force Nick Clegg to stand down before forming a coalition with the Lib Dems in 2015.

By George Eaton

With another hung parliament looking ever more likely in 2015 (Labour’s lead stands at just one in today’s YouGov poll), the question of whether Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg could ever work together is being asked again. At one point, it looked doubtful that Clegg would lead his party into the next election, but the Eastleigh by-election, the economic recovery and the wane of Vince Cable’s star have combined to create an unlikely political rebirth.

In interviews at the Lib Dem conference, Clegg, unsurprisingly, left the door open to a partnership with Miliband: “If the British people say that the most legitimate outcome of the next general election would be a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition, of course I would be prepared to play my part in that.”

But what of Miliband? Back in 2010, when hatred towards the Lib Dems ran raw, he suggested that, just as Clegg insisted on Gordon Brown’s departure, so the Deputy PM’s head would be the price of a Labour-Lib Dem coalition. He told the New Statesman: “Given what he is supporting, I think it is pretty hard to go into coalition with him.”

Asked again, “so you wouldn’t work with Nick Clegg?”, he replied: “That’s right. No.”

But when David Dimbleby reminded Harriet Harman of this on last night’s Question Time, she replied:

I’m sure that must be a misquote? I mean, he’s worked with him on, for example, tackling the problems of all the phone-hacking and the Tories trying to rig the boundaries, so actually when we’ve put forward a proposal that the Lib Dems are prepared to support then they do work with us. But we want an overall majority.

A misquote, as my former NS colleague Mehdi Hasan stated on Twitter, it was not. But it is striking how Miliband’s rhetoric towards Clegg has softened since 2010. Last summer, for instance, he told the Independent, “I would find it difficult to work with him”, which is some distance from the unambiguous “no” he offered two years before.

Much will, of course, depend on how great the Lib Dem losses are and how close Labour is to a majority. But judging by Harman’s words, it seems the party has decided that it no longer afford to go into the election ruling out any deal with Clegg.