Ribbon

Interesting times. It's fascinating watching the external presentations of the deal making between David Cameron's Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats' Nick Clegg (intentional inversion). Of course, we have no real idea of the conversations going on between the Tories and Whigs. They might be just as amicable as they are claiming, or the alleged personal vitriol between Clegg and Cameron maybe be sparking acidic fires around the room. We won't know for ages, probably until after the next election.

But what we do know it what is at stake. The Lib Dems want their cherished electoral reform. The simplistic view is that they should insist on a referendum for it as a pre-condition of joining a coalition. But the real responsibility on the Lib Dems is to gain a referendum and then win it, and they are understandably cautious about losing the only chance for a generation to secure fairer voting.

The easiest way to guarantee a referendum would be treat with Labour. But although no sprinter broke the ribbon and stormed to victory in the electoral race, Gordon Brown's abiding unpopularity with the wider public risks the fairness part of the argument (why should a party with less than 40% of the vote get to govern?) losing out to what we shall call the fearness part (PR is so fucked up it allows Gordon Brown to stay as Prime Minister).

Clegg is therefore understandable nervous that the fearness factor would lose him the referendum he had gained by joining with Labour. Thus he is still trying to make a deal with the Tories work despite the obvious roadblocks. Many in his party are urging him not to budge on PR.

But Clegg's second dilemma is this. If he walks away from the Tories, he condems the country to some sort of minority rule. That might be just fine - and it a fair representation of the vote - but ultimately people will fear the instability and might reflect on the limits of a new voting system that will make horse trading such as this much, much more likely. In effect he has a responsbility to make the inevitable results of PR look good, so that voters are more comfortable with the idea And that means he might be best served by selling out his voters and joining Cameron in the Cabinet and then trying to engineer a referendum in a different way.

Ouch.

This was the official entry for 1 May 2010. Until I catch up the date will be at the bottom of the blog!