Coalition demolition

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Blimey, what the hell is going on here?

The Torygraph are running entrapment operations against senior lib dems, presumably with the intention of bringing down the coalition. But they hold back from it a bit because they hate Murdoch even more than they hate the lib dems. What the Murdoch press are doing I have no idea.

Right wing tories clearly seem unhappy with the concessions they're having to make to the lib dems which should a) confuse anyone who thought the lib dems were rolling over and taking it in exchange for a referendum on PR oh no sorry AV which they aren't going to win anyway and b) terrify anyone who speculates as to what they'd be doing if they weren't being held back by the lib dems.

Meanwhile Call Me Dave is trying desperately to hold everything together - presumably because it's a long way from obvious that he'd win a general election if the coalition falls apart - while Nick Clegg curls up in a ball and whimpers.

David Milliband seems frankly confused by the whole thing, but generally in favour of sowing the seeds of dissent even if involves fairly obvious trolling. Wooing discontented liberals is an obvious and sensible plan, but (conversely to the previous point) would he really gain from the coalition collapsing tomorrow rather than a bit later when he's actually got his own patch cleared up a bit?

Presumably at the same time, anyone who lives in a country that actually has coalition governments on a regular basis can't figure out why it's headline news that on forming a coalition, politicians don't immediately undergo some sort of brain-meld and all start agreeing on absolutely everything.

I've been cooking, drinking red wine and doing the Eye crossword for the last day or so, and haven't really got around to figuring out what's actually going on yet... help?
 

don_quixote

Trent End
david milliband? heh

i can't figure it out either. i would quite like to see the downfall of this government although i fear a tory majority.
 

hucks

Your Message Here
I'm no fan of E Mili but I think standing aside, letting the coalition tear itself apart and doing the occasional bit of trolling is a decent strategy.

Oddly, the one coalition policy that really upsets the right wing press with its liberalism is the prison reform strategy- the 'rehabilitation revolution'. And it's Ken Clarke, a Tory, who's in charge of that.

So a good result for the telegraph would be for vince to get the sack, Clarke to move over to the business dept and be replaced at Justice by a right wing lib dem, eg Laws. I'm not saying that was the aim, obviously that's too complicated. But it might have happened.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Slightly OT, but who saw the Newsnight special a few weeks ago, filmed in a prison? Ken Clarke talked a lot of sense about rehab programmes while Hitch Jnr. fulminated like a, well, like an obnoxious right-wing prat I suppose.
 
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