By Martin Ackroyd
Nick Clegg keeps talking about how great it would be if we all worked together... and in principle, this sounds great.
However, the reason why Prime Minister’s Question Time is so fraught, isn’t because we all agree, but because we disagree. If we agreed, we’d be in the same party!
- The Lib Dems want to scrap the pound and join the euro, Labour aren’t far behind them, but the Conservatives want to keep the pound.
- We want a cap on immigration, Labour and the Lib Dems are happy for immigration to increase... the Lib Dems actually want to let illegal immigrants stay if they can avoid being caught for a few years.
- The Lib Dems and Labour want to impose a jobs tax; we do not, and neither do the bosses of many of Britain’s big companies such as M&S and Sainsbury’s...
- Labour and the Conservatives think nuclear power is a good thing, the Lib Dems want to build no more nuclear power stations.
- We don’t think it’s right that Scottish MPs should vote on matters only affecting England, the Lib Dems and Labour think this is fine.
- Labour and the Conservatives want to keep Trident, the Lib Dems want to scrap it.
Asking us all to work together, is like saying to a vegetarian and a meat eater, be reasonable... eat meat one day, and be a vegetarian the next day.
Or to use a footballing analogy, perhaps a Manchester United and a Liverpool supporter should compromise and support Arsenal?
Nick Clegg may be a nice chap, but he doesn’t have the power to agree anything. The Lib Dem constitution is set up so that, before any coalition could be formed, there has to be the agreement of the majority of Lib Dem MPs and the thirty or so members of the party’s Federal Executive (and if not with 75% approval of those two constituencies, via a special conference and then a ballot of all members, if the special conference didn’t give two-thirds backing).
Is this the best way to form a Government? After the British people have voted, should thirty unelected Lib Dem supporters be able to decide whether Labour or the Conservatives hold power? Should they be able to decide who is Prime Minister? Is this what Nick calls “the new politics”?!
However, it may be even more bizarre than that. People assume that if there is a hung parliament, the Lib Dems may hold the balance of power. This may or may not be the case.
What if the Scottish Nationalists and Plaid Cymru hold the balance? They say they would demand that more of UK taxpayers’ money is directed to Scotland or Wales. The same may go for MPs from Northern Ireland.
So the idea of everybody trying to agree sounds great. But the true implication of creating a government that could be brought down at any moment by one of the smaller parties is quite frightening. This is why a hung parliament is a bad thing.
