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British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will step down as leader of the Labour Party and Knifecrime Island. "He announced that Nick Clegg had just told him he wanted to begin formal talks with Labour. The PM said he thought it was 'in the interests of the whole country to form a progressive coalition government.'"
So does this presage a Labour-Lib Dem coalition?
Nick Clegg is going for the most awkward rose ceremony ever.
Everything about this election is making me realise how true-to-life The Thick of It and In the Loop actually is.
The fate of the United Kingdom rests on either Potato-Potato or Eeny Meeny Meiny Mo.
rock-paper-knives?
Listicle without, but with mild difficulty in refraining from, commentary: "Gordon Brown quits: Bookmaker William Hill has David Miliband odds-on favourite – at 4/7 – to be the next Labour leader. Also on offer: Alistair Darling at 8/1, Alan Johnson at 10/1, Ed Miliband at 11/1 and Ed Balls at 12/1."
I will pray to whatever gods necessary if it will result in a Prime Minister Ed Balls.
More specifically, apparently, he will do so "by September." Did we learn nothing from Conan and Leno?
Not a terrible analogy. It is also not dissimilar to Bob Schieffer keeping the CBS anchor seat warm until they could get Katie Couric.
Seriously! Is he quitting as Labour leader by September, or by PM by September if a Lab-Lib (or Lab-Lib-SDP-Alliance-Plaid-SNP-Green, if they want an actual majority) coalition gets formed? Will there be a placeholder PM until Labour pics their new leader? Will they just give the job to Clegg because he's so darn handsome?
Well, there needs to be a Prime Minister in place no matter what, and until someone else can cobble together 326 seats, he's still it. His offer, as I read it, is that he will stay until a replacement is picked, which will take a couple of weeks at minimum, but that he is indeed resigning so that he is no longer the reason the Lib Dems give that they cannot form a coalition.
Put simply, this is Brown's play to stay PM until September via a Lab-Lib coalition.
The Leno analogy is very, very apt.
Another election pending. Jackie Ashley had a great column on it this morning. http://is.gd/c2DoF
I was mainly wondering if he was quitting, like, RIGHT NOW, setting up some interim Labour leader/PM to keep the seat warm until the inevitable ascent of Prime Minister Balls. This makes more sense, though, if keeping Brown's sad, mopey face around long enough to remind everyone why they voted against Labour in the first place "makes sense."
(Also, they only need 323 to win, because the 5 Sinn Fein MPs won't take their seats, because of Freedom for Ireland, so in effect there only 645 members of parliament. This is actually kind of important, because a 323-member coaliton is possible with Plaid but without the somewhat tetchier Scots nationalists.)
BBC talking head: "What does Clegg say if he walks away from the Tories?" Um, "In your face"?
Well, this is heartening. And it makes Billy Bragg look less insane for insisting over-and-over in my Facebook feed for 3 days that everyone needed to chill out and be sure that Clegg would not help form a Tory government. (Although he was even backing off that, saying that if they got PR, then a brief Tory government would be worth it.)
British politics leave me as flummoxed as British sports. They feel like they've fallen through into our dimension from a parallel world.
A Lib-Lab coalition would mean that England would be completely screwed. They wouldn't have enough votes without the regional nationalist parties, which means that England is going to pay the price for dealing with the deficit and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not going to suffer. It's undemocratic and frankly appalling.
every single time I read the words Knifecrime Island I actually laugh out loud. frankly, it's becoming an issue.