What should we all be making of the flurry of weekend rumours about Charles Kennedy-led defections from the Liberal Democrats to Labour? Though I reported this development during my annual August stint on the news rota, it was a matter of duty. I don't think it will happen. The Australian election result complicates matters too.
No one denies that there are problems looming for the Lib Dems inside the coalition, as events of recent days have underlined. As Jackie Ashley notes in her Guardian column today, Simon Hughes – the unofficial leader of the internal opposition – got cross about Michael Gove's "free" school policy and demanded party vetoes.
Then there was the problem over Sir Philip Green's appointment to look at Whitehall waste. Apart from being a loudmouth bit of City rough who famously abused the then-Guardian City editor Paul Murphy on the suspicion he might be Irish, Green is keen to avoid his family wasting too much money on tax: his wife, who lives in tax-lite Monaco, owns much of their wealth. Sir Phil sees her at weekends.
Why do they do it, inflict family separation, residence in Switzerland and other miseries on themselves, just to save money when they're far too wealthy to spend it all in one lifetime?
A chum who worries about this sort of thing tells me that one über-rich contact explained that when you are REALLY rich the only way you can test how good you still are is by seeing how much you can keep from the taxman. Sad or what? Bill Gates, the rich man's rich man, knows better: he gives it away.
Green's appointment niggled Lib Dems, including Clegg, who said at the weekend that he looked forward to Phil's report and that he wouldn't be around long. Tory chums tell me the party is too careless about CVs and that David Cameron, who controls his party machine (always a mistake), is a bit lazy on detail.
So we're seeing signs of discontent. The Times reports this morning that Clegg and his health team will be challenged at their party conference in Liverpool next month over the coalition's plans to hand over £60bn worth of NHS commissioning to unaccountable GPs, all part of Andrew Lansley's vision of workers' control. So you can add that to the list of woes.
Yet I can't see Charlie Kennedy, an MP since 1983 when he was 23, first SDP then Lib Dem, party leader between 1999-2006 (Paddy Ashdown wasn't keen on him), leading a bulk defection as the Michael Ashcroft-owned PoliticsHome website first reported – and Labour grabbed with speed.
It happened, as we reported on Friday, that Ed Miliband, chasing brother David for the Labour leadership, was making overtures, threats of "extinction" too, to Lib Dem supporters in Scotland as the rumour surfaced and has since said he'd welcome defectors with open arms.
I'm sure he'll get some too, as the coalition's cuts take their toll. Today's FT carries analysis – behind the paywall, sadly – suggesting the budget strategy is indeed unfair to the poor. That matters to many Lib Dems, including Kennedy, whose character is shaped by a Highland sense of social justice – and Ming Campbell, whose family were Glasgow Labour.
But what's much more likely to happen, says me, is that the Lib Dems will split in a major crisis – which one, I don't know – and that Kennedy, still nursing his leadership hopes, still only 50, has positioned himself to take up the party standard if Nick Clegg and the free-market wing – the "Orange Book" Lib Dems – stick with the coalition deal, come economic hell or rising sea levels.
Why? Because that's what happened – twice – during the past century, after the 1916-18 war coalition fractured and after the 1931 economic coalition. By the time Winston Churchill's cross-party 1940-45 coalition ended, there was only a taxi-full of Liberal MPs left.
The party spent 50 years in rehab only to gamble its accumulated savings on 11 May. It could work and keep them in power for years, but a split is a serious option. If so, could Lib Dem activists link up with "the party of Iraq" quite so soon, even under a new leader? I doubt it. Principle, priggery, call it what you will.
Jackie Ashley argues today that Labour risks ruining a future relationship with the Lib Dems – something which will be advocated at Clegg's conference, so we hear; it's a more natural partnership – by being horrid to them now.
Well, it's better than ignoring them, as much Guardian political analysis did in the boom Blair years. Ashley points to the amicable tone of the coalition's internal workings so far as proof that times have changed. Hmm.
That requires us to exclude Iain Duncan Smith's promising shouting match with George Osborne over welfare cuts (and his two threats to resign, reported today) and other tiffs. Myself, I think that honeymoons are honeymoons: they end. Day-to-day politics involves shouting and skulduggery, just like football, banking or religion.
But Ashley is right to make the connection with the Australian election, fought under an alternative vote (AV) voting system of the kind Clegg will advocate in May's referendum – and do so against the smart, populist 'no' vote leadership of Matthew Elliott, brains behind the TaxAvoiders' Alliance.
As you know, it produced a stalemate yet to be resolved. My take is that – as in Britain – a government which loses its pre-existing majority has lost. So I don't rate Labor PM Julia Gillard's chances of hanging on to power with the help of backwoodsfolk and Greens, tree-huggers of a different hue.
It's a pity that Tony Abbott, the Oz Tory leader, sounds like a serious plonker. Much of Oz is crisping like fried bacon; it doesn't need an anti-climate change PM in 2010. But that's their problem, not ours, not directly, though we are all in this together, as the coalition likes to say.
Jackie Ashley is also right to remind those who advocated (we're not all guilty around here, Jackie) the overthrow of Gordon Brown by a supposedly more voter-friendly Labour colleague last year, that this plan would not have worked if Gillard's experience is any guide, which it probably is.
Either way, the Australian drama of a hung parliament will now get more attention as it unfolds. It may be just fine, as the Electoral Reform Society was quick to suggest yesterday (voters got what they wanted, it says), but there again, perhaps not. Matthew Elliott and the 'no' campaign will be watching too.
It's another problem beyond his control for Nick Clegg to worry about.
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