There are some clear dynamics at work which make a Liberal/Conservative Alliance inevitable.
- The Tories cannot go it alone and get their Queen’s Speech away- they don’t have the numbers (quite).
- Labour and the Liberals do not have sufficient combined seats either.
- If Clegg does not throw his hat in with the Tories, he will simply force a second election within weeks.
These are simple political matters but there are wider issues that are more important to the Common Weal.
The markets will not stand for further prevarication with our getting to grips with the deficit. As a Liberal it hurts me to say it but The Conservative position is the most credible economic policy. I believe that Cable is sufficiently aware of the urgency of the current global cris (and our local structural problems) to embrace the Conservative agenda.
The animosity from Liberal to Conservatives is at the grass-roots level and concerns itself with local politics, in particular the way Conservatives behave at a micro level. This is not a material obstacle to a macro alliance at Parliamentary level.
The perceived “showstopper” is PR. The Conservatives have less to lose from PR than Labour and though small c conservatism is rigidly anti-change, the large C Conservative Central Office is likely to be sanguine about the impact of electoral reform relative to the horror of political and financial meltdown that might result from either going it alone or a new LibLab pact.
Brown’s goose is cooked, the Labour Party sidelined. I see no reason, political or economic for Clegg and Cameron putting them back into play.
