Lib Dems Never Wanted Coalition with Brown
The Daily Mail reports:
Buckingham Palace helped David Cameron and Nick Clegg keep Gordon Brown in Downing Street in the days after he lost the Election to make it easier for the Coalition to take power, a former Cabinet Minister claims tonight.
The Palace, together with the Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders, made Mr Brown believe he still had a chance of clinging to power – even though they knew he didn’t – because it was feared he might resign too quickly and leave Britain without a Government.
The ploy to prop up Mr Brown gave Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg vital extra hours to seal their political alliance and avoided plunging the Queen into a constitutional crisis, with no Prime Minister.
The disclosure comes in a new book by former Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws, based on secret notes of the dramatic talks between the three parties after the Election failed to produce an overall winner.
Mr Laws, a senior Liberal Democrat who was present throughout the discussions, gives the first blow-by-blow insider’s account of the high-octane and often acrimonious exchanges between the party leaders and rival negotiating teams.
His book, 22 Days In May, exclusively serialised in The Mail on Sunday from today, reveals how:
* The Lib Dems never really wanted to do a deal with Mr Brown and be ‘chained to the Labour Government’s decaying corpse’.
* Ed Miliband was reduced to the role of ‘tea boy’ in the talks – and revealed that he could not upset the unions.
* Peter Mandelson responded to Mr Laws’s support for a mansion tax on £2?million-plus houses by protesting: ‘Surely the rich have suffered enough?’
* When the Coalition talks stalled, panicking David Cameron exclaimed: ‘People will soon be asking who the hell is running the country.’
* After being harangued by ‘impossible’ Mr Brown, Mr Clegg cried out: ‘That man!’ – and fellow Lib Dem Danny Alexander called the former Prime Minister ‘absolutely barmy’.
* Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman deliberately sabotaged any prospect of a Lib-Lab pact.
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