Chris Huhne discusses the prospects for a Labour-Lib Dem coalition in 2015.

Chris Huhne discusses the prospects for a Labour-Lib Dem coalition in 2015.

Now that he is free from being a Member of Parliament, and not constrained by having to toe the party line, Chris Huhne has been offering his thoughts on a variety of subjects.

Yesterday Chris Huhne wrote a piece in Juncture magazine which discusses on the formation of the current coalition in 2010, and the possibility for a Labour/Lib Dem coalition in 2015. (You can read the piece here and here’s the Guardian write up of the Huhne piece.)

He says on the prospects of a Lib Dem and Labour coalition in 2015, talking about the various subjects there is agreement between the Lib Dems and Labour, he then moves onto the personalities.

It was, in my view, unwise of Nick Clegg to make Gordon Brown’s leadership a public issue. It is no business of one party to question the elected leader of another, and inevitably it invited retaliation in kind. Coalition politics requires respect for sincerely held views – and for leaders – whatever your private views may be. Labour leaders will therefore have to bite their lips if personal animus is to be controlled.

I’m sure the main focus of his piece will be this phrase “The DNA of the Liberal Democrats is anti-Conservative”

For me, his most interesting observation is this,

[Clegg] is certainly safer as leader than he looked a year ago. Vince Cable did not have a good conference. But it is Clegg who has been making clear overtures to the Lib-Dem left, whether it is on personnel changes – with Norman Baker replacing Jeremy Browne at the Home Office – or in policy, with a harder line on standards in academies or a stronger pro-green emphasis on wind power and taxes.

You can get 1/5 on Clegg being Lib Dem leader at the General Election and 3/1 on the next Government after the General Election being a Lab/Lib coalition.

Could Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems be the only constant in government this decade?

TSE

Comments are closed.