British politics after Blair

[sammymorse]

So Blair has set a 12-month time limit on remaining Labour Party leader although, as Guido Fawkes notes, not necessarily as Prime Minister. Guido calls this the Aznar option, it's worth pointing out it was also the less-than-successful Gerhard Schröder option too

Comments

[matgb]

Labour, in particular, have a lot of supporters who viserally hate the Tories

On that, I agree completely. I can actually see the current leadership thinking it a great idea, but it would never work.

I'm quite sanguine about .. a blue-yellow coalition. There, I never thought I'd hear myself say that!

Neither did I, and I agree completely; am in fact intending to work quite hard for it over the next few years (my blogging magnum opus thus far). Which given I'm way on the left of the LDs and openly use the term socialist as a self description is showing how bad I think the current lot are.

It will cause a lot of problems for the LibDems (who'd actually have to put policies into practice)

I actually think that, at least within Parliament, they're nearly ready for that. Especially true of the newer intake who are actually looking seriously at the chance of Govt rather than simply being decent constituency MPs like some of the '97 and earlier intake)

and for the Tories (who have this silly idea that coalitions are somehow... well foreign.

Like the Tory Party itself isn't a broad church coalition in the first place. They spent 20 years preaching choice, competition and markets, but want winner takes all choice denying FPTP in the false illusion of strong govt... I'll, um, stop ranting shall I.

If they can get over that (and I think Cameron, Osborne, Huhne and Davey are more than capable of whipping their respective parties into line).

Yes, agreed. Huhne in particular really impressed me in the leadership bid. And I own one of his books, which threw me when I figured it out.

Scotland writ large? I really don't like the current Scottish government which makes policy like a mad middle-aged social worker and I think it would be an economic disaster for the UK.

Y'know, if you keep making off the cuff comments like that, you'll have no problem picking up readers; agree completely, I haven't read much good things to come out of the Scottish Govt for ages, and that the SNP are the only other valid coalition partner is worrying in many ways. Still, at least the Nats are a little less "we must stamp and categorise everyone" than Labour.

[sammymorse]

Well, I can't disagree with much of that either!

As far as Scotland goes, I don't think Alex Salmond is returning to the Scottish Parliament for nothing. He wants to be First Minister. If the LibDems can maintain something close their UK General Election performance and the SNP can avoid meltdown, a LibDem/SNP/Green coalition with a workable majority is entirely possible, at least mathematically. Especially as the Scottish far left is in circular firing squad mode, which will gift 4 or 5 seats to that putative coalition. The LibDems could even consider gifting Salmond an independence referendum in the knowledge the pro-independence side can't really break the 35% mark which would kill the issue for a generation. Although it would split the government and there would be a risk of a backlash.

The LibDem experience in coalition with Labour in Scotland has been odd - there was a lot of early promise, Labour's repeated leadership problems helped the LibDems make their own mark in terms of policy, the vote held up well... but the longer it's gone on, the more the LibDems realise why they didn't join the Labour party in the first place. Or at least that's my impression.