you're allowing all the minority parties (which includes Labour, presumably?) a 'what else were they to do?' get-out clause about negotiating in their own interests

I should have picked up on this yesterday, but that's not what I'm arguing. I merely said they should be allowed to negotiate behind closed doors. As for whose interests they should be doing it in - well, I'm not so naive as to think that politicians can be expected to be totally selfless, but I did expect that they would be trying to arrange things so as to maximise the prospects of their being able to carry out their political programme. What I find hard to stomach is that the Labour Party appears to have sacrificed both power and their programme in favour of their own narrow interests as a parliamentary club. If so, I think that's a dereliction, if not a betrayal of those did vote for them and whose interests they purport to represent.