If you and all the other people like you HAD voted for them, they wouldn't have been in the position of needing a less-than-stable coalition, squeaking through on rather low numbers!
It's always pesky when people don't vote the way you want them to, I guess. But from what you're saying it seems it's only reasonable to expect Labour to want to govern in the optimal circumstances, i.e. where their 30-40% or so of the vote results in a parliamentary majority. I disagree. If they were serious about not wanting a Tory government they had it in their power to prevent it. Of course a coalition with the LibDems and others would have been difficult, but it would have represented far more than 50% of the votes cast, and would have been perfectly legitimate, whatever the Murdoch press had to say. That they chose to let the Tories in makes them at least as culpable as the Lib Dems, in my view. Indeed, given that choice I don't see what else the Lib Dems could have done other than to throw in their lot with Cameron or force an immediate second election (which really wouldn't have been in the public interest).
All this is, of course, on the assumption that the stories about the Labour Party rebelling against the idea of coalition really is true, but I've heard nothing today to suggest otherwise.
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Date: 2010-05-12 09:29 pm (UTC)It's always pesky when people don't vote the way you want them to, I guess. But from what you're saying it seems it's only reasonable to expect Labour to want to govern in the optimal circumstances, i.e. where their 30-40% or so of the vote results in a parliamentary majority. I disagree. If they were serious about not wanting a Tory government they had it in their power to prevent it. Of course a coalition with the LibDems and others would have been difficult, but it would have represented far more than 50% of the votes cast, and would have been perfectly legitimate, whatever the Murdoch press had to say. That they chose to let the Tories in makes them at least as culpable as the Lib Dems, in my view. Indeed, given that choice I don't see what else the Lib Dems could have done other than to throw in their lot with Cameron or force an immediate second election (which really wouldn't have been in the public interest).
All this is, of course, on the assumption that the stories about the Labour Party rebelling against the idea of coalition really is true, but I've heard nothing today to suggest otherwise.