22 Days in May by Laws David

Author:Laws, David [Laws, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Biteback
Published: 2010-11-22T05:00:00+00:00

Tuesday 11 May 2010

‘Make your mind up time’

I was up again early on Tuesday, and our negotiating team and staff met in Cowley Street at around 8am to consider our strategy. On the morning media, George Osborne had described the Conservative concession on the Alternative Vote as a ‘final’ offer. Meanwhile, senior Labour MPs were beginning to rubbish the idea of a Lib–Lab coalition. It was clear to everyone that we were now into the ‘endgame’.

Our first meeting, as agreed, was to be with the Labour team. We decided that at the beginning of the meeting we really needed to clear the air, and be blunt that yesterday’s negotiation had not gone well and that we expected a more positive approach from today’s talks. ‘Who would like to deliver that message to the Labour team?’ asked Danny. ’I think that Andrew would do a good job!’ said Chris Huhne, glancing at Andrew Stunell. ‘Fine,’ said Andrew calmly, and we discussed how he would lay down the line to Messrs Mandelson, Balls and co.

Even with the benefit of a stern lecture from Andrew, we were not optimistic that the talks would succeed. But we were convinced that the Labour team would today be on better behaviour, not least because we knew that the Lib Dem/Labour hotlines would have been buzzing overnight with tales of bad body language and talks on a knife-edge.

We were also sure that if we did go into a coalition with the Conservatives, the Labour team – not least Ed Balls and Ed Miliband – would try to blame us for being determined to go in with the Tories, come what may.

We therefore expected that the ‘truculent trio’ – Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman – would be on better behaviour.

Our fear was that the Labour team would do just enough to seem reasonable, but not enough to assure us on key issues such as tax, education funding and AV. This would make it more difficult for us to give Nick Clegg and our colleagues a clear recommendation, without which a final, decisive, verdict amongst our Parliamentary Party would prove difficult.

So we drew up a detailed list of the eighteen issues on which we still had important disagreements with Labour, and prepared to set off again for room 391 in Portcullis House. We knew that some of these eighteen issues could be resolved, but on some of the most important we still seemed far apart.

Before we could leave for the talks, we received a message that Gordon Brown was now asking all Labour Cabinet ministers to contact their Lib Dem opposite numbers to discuss agreement on policy issues. ‘This is absolutely barmy,’ said Danny. ‘How can we conduct a serious negotiation in this way? What on earth is Gordon Brown up to?’ The whole thing seemed bizarre and chaotic, and we quickly paged senior colleagues to warn them not to get involved.

The next call was more extraordinary still. It was from Vince Cable who told us that

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