Rather than simply sit and watch this on TV, I decided to go for a walk round Westminster.
I timed it pretty well – saw Gordon Brown leave Downing Street, saw the Tory delegation leave the Cabinet Office (William Hague, George Osborne and Oliver Letwin) and then round to the Labour HQ on Victoria Street where Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson were just heading inside.
Some photos below – very hard to get these, due to the media scrum…
Cameron is now certain to be Prime Minister, and probably very soon. It may not be a bad thing for Labour to regroup in opposition under a new leader. It will be interesting to see how long a Conservative-Liberal Democrat deal can actually last – lots of MPs and lots of party members, on both sides, are going to be pretty annoyed by the compromises made.
Perhaps the biggest worry is that the way this has played out is likely to be used as an argument against a more proportional voting system. While there may be a referendum, there is no way the Tories are actually going to campaign for change; Labour won’t feel that its necessarily in its interests; and the Lib Dems could be very isolated.
Nobody has really come out of this with credit. Cameron really should have won clearly, given the circumstances. Clegg didn’t deliver on the/his own hype, and these negotiations haven’t done him many favours. Labour lost several seats, but did less badly than expected. But given the choices ahead, Labour may well be relieved to be out of it.
I’ve been out at a conference on ‘Citizenship without Community’ all day (keynotes by Engin Isin and Etienne Balibar), and so have only been getting odd updates on what’s been going on. When I wrote on Saturday that Brown should resign as Labour leader to free up options this was perhaps more in hope than expectation… But it’s certainly opened things up, and definitely got the Tories worried. Given the horrendous financial decisions to come, it’s interesting just how keen everyone – Labour, Lib Dems and Tories – is to be involved.
It seems likely though that there will be some change to the electoral system, or at least a referendum on that. Interesting times…
David Harvey gave a few talks in London recently on his latest book The Enigma of Capital. I went to the one at LSE and the next day he spoke at Kings. The video from the latter is available here.
Susan and I went up to Middlesex this evening for a brief visit. The security on site seemed relaxed about the whole thing, and as soon as we entered the building through an open window we were welcomed by one of the organisers. Lynn Segal was just finishing a talk as we arrived. It was very clearly a student-initiated and student-led event, and there were maybe thirty or so people there. Some staff around – I had a brief word with Christian Kerslake and Peter Hallward was there too. We stayed for the next talk given by Vijak Haddadi before heading home.
Good luck to everyone involved – this was an interesting event to observe, and I’m glad we made the effort. It does take a while to get there from central London though…
There is a news roundup here – http://savemdxphil.com/2010/05/09/press-round-up/
Living in Westminster can have disadvantages… the news helicopters are starting to get annoying.
What is Nick Clegg thinking?
A report in The Observer on the Middlesex situation
Earlier today I had a bike ride in central London, where after heading down the river to Putney and back on the other bank (about 17 miles) I took a detour via Trafalgar Square to see the pro-PR protests. About 1000 or so people marched down Whitehall, past Downing Street and to Parliament to protest at what they see is a potential sell-out to the Tories by the Liberal Democrats, and the lost chance for a referendum on voting reform.
Nick Robinson of the BBC though reports on another possibility – a ‘progressive alliance’ or rainbow coalition that would take in Labour, the Lib Dems, the one Green MP, and various ‘nationalist’ parties in Wales, and Scotland. The Northern Irish SDLP would also be included. This would give a small majority.
It’s got to be a better prospect than Cameron as PM, with the Lib Dems working formally or informally with him. It’s unwieldy, would be subject to all sorts of deals to make and preserve alliances, and may not last long. It’s hard to see how Gordon Brown could head it, and the closer this looks to a possibility the quicker he should resign as leader of the Labour party in order to move that along. I think he could do that while still PM – John Major did it in the 1990s to force his enemies to confront him head on, which is when Michael Portillo probably had his best chance of being leader, only he chose not to go public and Major beat John Redwood. Then Brown could remain PM until the detail of the other alliance was worked out, but with the knowledge he would not be its head.
One of the problems of the leaders debate was that it made it appear that people were chosing a PM, when we actually chose MPs who effectively chose the PM. But it’s entirely possible that the next PM was not involved in those debates, and not one of the three party leaders laying wreaths at the Cenotaph for VE day on Whitehall earlier today.
Something to hold out some hope for. There were other positives in Thursday’s election, which was not nearly as bad as I’d feared. The British National Party were trounced and lost the council seats they had; UKIP didn’t get seats; there was a Green MP elected; Cameron didn’t get a majority; the Labour party were not annihilated, leaving open the possibility of a swift return to power, rather than out for a generation as in 1979-97 (though maybe even sooner)…
http://savemdxphil.com/letters-of-support/
Some really big names have written… I’m flattered to be in such company. I can’t remember such a strong reaction to a University department closure… though it’s certainly clear that the internet has helped with the mobilisation.
I plan to go to Middlesex tomorrow to lend a little more visible and less virtual support.
[update – this gives more information, from Peter Hallward – http://infinitethought.cinestatic.com/index.php/site/update_from_middlesex_from_peter_hallward/ ]
