Cameron and Clegg: A deal in the works?

The pressure is on Prime Minister Gordon Brown today to step down, as the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats appear to be getting closer to a coalition agreement that would make Tory leader David Cameron the next Prime Minister.

Britain’s political establishment remains a deeply uncertain landscape today following last Thursday’s inconclusive election resulting in a hung parliament: According to the BBC, several senior Labour ministers are in 10 Downing Street, trying to convince Prime Minister Gordon Brown to step down as Prime Minister and Labour leader, in an effort to boost Labour’s chances of an alliance with the Liberal Democrats.

Meanwhile, The Telegraph reported that the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, the party that took the largest number of seats in Thursday’s election but not enough to secure an overall majority, are close to an “economic deal” that would put Tory leader David Cameron in power. Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, has given himself until the end of today to make a decision: Work with the Tories or work with Labour.

The three parties and their would-be leaders have until 25 May – the Queen’s speech – to hash out a deal or face another general election.

The media perception on Brown today is divided: He’s either, as London Mayor Boris Johnson wrote in his Telegraph column, “like some illegal settler”, desperately clinging to No. 10 after word got out of his secret meeting with Clegg today, or he is, as some senior Labour officials told Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian, just “going through the motions”. Said Freedland, “Is Brown now the becalmed statesman, planning his exit, or the bloodied survivor, determined to fight on? The likelihood is that, when it comes to Brown – the most psychologically complex figure to inhabit Downing Street since Winston Churchill – the answer is both.”

Whatever Brown’s personal state, however, the state of New Labour is tenuous at best: As Mary Riddell wrote in The Telegraph today, attempting to oust Brown with no idea who should succeed him or how might “plunge Labour into civil war at just the moment when the national interest requires politicians to look outwards.” Ministers in the party are also at odds over how much to offer the Lib Dems, if anything at all. A Labour-Lib Dem alliance may be the only thing to save Labour, but internal implosion seems to be making it all the more difficult to achieve that.

Julian Glover, leader writer for The Guardian, claimed today that the best possible solution is a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, “not a bastard born of necessity and ambition but an authentic government with the potential to last”. Clegg needs to come to grips with the fact that some of his party will defect for Labour; Tory party members won’t leave, but they may try to sabotage the alliance from the inside. But if they are unable to come to an agreement, Cameron would likely become Prime Minister anyway and try to run a populist government.  The onus, Glover wrote, is now on the Liberal Democrats to make a deal work. “Politics is about the pursuit of power. They are close to it. They must take it,” he concluded. “A prissy standoffishness would consign them to irrelevance and confirm the very fact that they hoped this election would prove wrong: Britain still cannot escape its old political tribes.”

More Election UK »