Developments and a resignation

It is interesting to watch politics from the outside - and an interested outside at that.  Gordon Brown has announced that he will step down before the party conference season in September ... and it does not look as if the negotiations between the parties will reach a conclusion very soon - so it will not be 'Gordon Brown is going today' or possibly any day very soon ...

It appears that the Liberal Democrats' own divisions are being exposed by the negotiations - Nick Clegg is reported to have got on very well with David Cameron - while Vince Cable will not, it appears, countenance a deal with the Conservatives.

The difficulty for the Liberal Democrats is that they can properly be described as a party of opposition - and that explains why they have been able to adopt and espouse different (and sometimes completely opposing) views at the same time - depending on the audience and the constituency.  Some will describe themselves as 'centre left', others as a 'party of the left', but many will describe themselves as being of the 'centre'; indeed, some of them espouse 'liberal' views that would and could fall within the same philosophy as that of the Conservative party.  In policy terms, the contradictions only really matter when a choice has to be made ... and that time has come.

The problem for the Conservatives is that they feel that they 'won' the election; and whilst they did succeed in winning many more seats and a greater proportion of the vote, they did not win the majority.  The way in which people like John Redwood are behaving is, in my view, exemplary.  He is effectively accepting that an unappealing compromise will need to be reached and is not adopting the approach of Lord Tebbit - who appears to want to scream from the sidelines (which, to be honest, is both unappealing and unlikely to win friends outside a narrow sphere).

Labour's difficulties are potentially more severe - even if they do a deal with the Liberal Democrats, the combined resource will not have enough votes to be a majority and so reliance will have to be made on others as well; the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Northern Irish MPs.  Scottish Labour abhors the SNP with a passion and vice versa; and in Wales an uneasy truce between Plaid Cymru and Labour exists to enable the parties to work together in Cardiff Bay.  That is before one considers the rifts that exist in Labour itself in respect of electoral reform and other such matters.

Given the problems that the country faces, Labour's shenanigans look shabby to me.  The arguments about a 'progressive majority' are mere cover for what is in reality a naked political gamble that does not deserve respect let alone to succeed.  We shall see what today holds ... and I will watch from the outside with interest and not inconsiderable concern.