Having picked up a copy at the 2013 Progress annual
conference, I recently read Andrew Adonis’s account of the May 2010 coalition
negotiations, 5
Days in May: The Coalition and Beyond. This came on top of me already
having read 22 Days in
May, David Laws’s account of the same events and his subsequent 17-day spell
as a Treasury Secretary, a couple of years ago, making for an interesting basis
for comparison – indeed, in the reflective closing sections of Adonis’s account
he quotes and challenges parts of Laws’s portrayal of the negotiations
directly, while also using some of Laws’s comments to back up his own version
of events.
In most respects, the two accounts are broadly similar and both books make for very interesting reading, but on a few critical details of the five-day drama both men sought to document, they offer almost alternate-universe interpretations of what precisely happened and why, ultimately, a Lib-Con and not Lib-Lab coalition emerged on May 11th 2010.
What’s more, these details aren’t irrelevant to us. A hung parliament is still a more than plausible outcome in 2015, some would even say the most likely one, and the differing details given about the last round of negotiations by these two men give us somewhat different starting points for trying to guess how certain figures will behave and what procedure will be followed in any future ones – the nature of British politics and the strength of our economy and society could soon come to depend on those differences in the very near future.
I’ll start with what the accounts have in common. The timelines in both accounts and the main people involved are the same, as one would expect. Some paraphrases essentially match between both accounts, lending credibility to both (for example, Adonis quotes Chris Huhne as saying to Labour that “there will be plenty of time for Lords reform and other measures now that we won’t have your usual bevy of Home Office Bills” during a constitutional reform discussion, p.101 in 5 Days, and Laws records Huhne having said essentially the same - “if we no longer have to deal with an endless supply of New Home Office Bills, there will be a lot more time for other legislation!”, p.152 in 22 Days).
In terms of reasons why a coalition could not be brought together, Laws and Adonis appear to agree on at least one – what Adonis terms Labour’s ‘fatalism’. Put simply, after having governed for 13 exhausting years and reconciled themselves to losing the 2010 election, many key figures in the cabinet and the Parliamentary Labour Party longed to return to opposition and regroup rather than attempt to ‘limp on’ in power, something that both men stress their displeasure with. Adonis is particularly strident on this point and condemns Labour MPs for their apparent dereliction of duty, arguing that “Labour should have fought with every sinew in 2010 to retain power. To give up power voluntarily, because you are tired of government and it is all too difficult, is a betrayal of the people you serve. In politics, exhaustion and attrition need to be overcome, not indulged” (p.144 in 5 Days).
This critique perhaps does not take full account of the honest-held concerns of many Labourites that an attempt at an anti-Tory coalition on a potentially weak basis could badly damage Labour and the broader progressive left for years to come, but Adonis does put forward a counter-intuitive and yet very persuasive case that if a new leader such as David Miliband had emerged after Brown’s resignation in the early stages of a new coalition, such a government could have been revitalised and could perhaps even later seize an against-wisdom election victory on a continuity mandate, as Major did in 1992 and Brown could perhaps have done in the 2007 ‘election that never was’.
In most respects, the two accounts are broadly similar and both books make for very interesting reading, but on a few critical details of the five-day drama both men sought to document, they offer almost alternate-universe interpretations of what precisely happened and why, ultimately, a Lib-Con and not Lib-Lab coalition emerged on May 11th 2010.
What’s more, these details aren’t irrelevant to us. A hung parliament is still a more than plausible outcome in 2015, some would even say the most likely one, and the differing details given about the last round of negotiations by these two men give us somewhat different starting points for trying to guess how certain figures will behave and what procedure will be followed in any future ones – the nature of British politics and the strength of our economy and society could soon come to depend on those differences in the very near future.
I’ll start with what the accounts have in common. The timelines in both accounts and the main people involved are the same, as one would expect. Some paraphrases essentially match between both accounts, lending credibility to both (for example, Adonis quotes Chris Huhne as saying to Labour that “there will be plenty of time for Lords reform and other measures now that we won’t have your usual bevy of Home Office Bills” during a constitutional reform discussion, p.101 in 5 Days, and Laws records Huhne having said essentially the same - “if we no longer have to deal with an endless supply of New Home Office Bills, there will be a lot more time for other legislation!”, p.152 in 22 Days).
In terms of reasons why a coalition could not be brought together, Laws and Adonis appear to agree on at least one – what Adonis terms Labour’s ‘fatalism’. Put simply, after having governed for 13 exhausting years and reconciled themselves to losing the 2010 election, many key figures in the cabinet and the Parliamentary Labour Party longed to return to opposition and regroup rather than attempt to ‘limp on’ in power, something that both men stress their displeasure with. Adonis is particularly strident on this point and condemns Labour MPs for their apparent dereliction of duty, arguing that “Labour should have fought with every sinew in 2010 to retain power. To give up power voluntarily, because you are tired of government and it is all too difficult, is a betrayal of the people you serve. In politics, exhaustion and attrition need to be overcome, not indulged” (p.144 in 5 Days).
This critique perhaps does not take full account of the honest-held concerns of many Labourites that an attempt at an anti-Tory coalition on a potentially weak basis could badly damage Labour and the broader progressive left for years to come, but Adonis does put forward a counter-intuitive and yet very persuasive case that if a new leader such as David Miliband had emerged after Brown’s resignation in the early stages of a new coalition, such a government could have been revitalised and could perhaps even later seize an against-wisdom election victory on a continuity mandate, as Major did in 1992 and Brown could perhaps have done in the 2007 ‘election that never was’.
The problem that Gordon Brown’s personal
legitimacy represented in the negotiations is another key theme in both
accounts, along with the frosty personal relationship between Gordon Brown and
Nick Clegg. Both Adonis and Laws also agree to some extent that relations
between the Liberal Democrat and Labour parties more broadly were weak, with
Labour officials being on better terms with the old guard of centre-left Lib
Dem officials (Vince Cable, Paddy Ashdown, Menzies Campbell) than the newer
generation of Lib Dem rising stars surrounding Clegg. A lack of awareness about
internal Lib Dem politics and their key figures on the part of Labour was also
a seeming problem. Adonis admits that the other Labour negotiators did not
know anything about a key member of the Lib Dem negotiating team, local government
expert Andrew Stunell MP, while Laws mentions that Harriet Harman at one point said
during a discussion with Chris Huhne on ID cards that Labour would need to
discuss the matter properly with “whoever the Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman is”,
seemingly unaware that this was Huhne himself (p.144 in 22 Days).
However, on other elements differences
emerge. One is the first call between Clegg and Brown, which the Lib Dems brand
as a “disaster” according to Adonis (backed up in Laws’s account), even though
Adonis and Team Brown felt it went well. This leaves open a crucial question as
to whether this was genuine difference in perception, glossing over by Adonis
or sly manoeuvring on the part of the Lib Dems – Adonis suggests the latter of
the three (and also reveals that it was Paddy Ashdown of all people who leaked
the “disaster” line to the press).
A particularly crucial issue is how Ed
Miliband and Ed Balls, two of the five Labour negotiation team members,
approached the coalition negotiations and related to the Lib Dems. David Laws makes
clear in no uncertain terms that he felt that the two deliberately scuttled the
talks in order to further their own Labour leadership bids. Adonis however
takes exception to this, refuting vague Lib Dem assertions that their “body
language” (as opposed to their actual words or stated policy positions) was
“negative” and that Balls was too hostile, given that the equal
argumentativeness of Andrew Stunell and some of the Lib Dem negotiators.
Crucially, after a preliminary meeting between the Labour and Lib Dem teams,
Adonis quotes Ed Miliband as having said the following about the prospects of
coalition: “I hate to say it, but I think this is destined to succeed. There
wasn’t anything big on which we disagreed, assuming they don’t mean that stuff
about faster cuts” (p.50, 5 Days).
Meanwhile, in Laws’s account, at one stage he gleefully documents how Danny Alexander “joked” about Ed Miliband’s ties to the unions during a discussion over pension reform and says that Ed “tried to look mystified” by the remark (p.175 in 22 Days), not exactly representative of a diplomatic attitude on Laws’s part towards Miliband, despite his claims elsewhere in the book to have tried to have maintained a dialogue. This disagreement would appear important, as of all the things that could determine the outcome of a 2015 hung parliament, the approach that Ed Miliband (and to a lesser extent, Balls) take on coalition and the nature of their relationships with key Lib Dems could be decisive. Since the election, it has been known that there have been quiet talks between Labour and senior Lib Dems, especially Vince Cable, but it is clear that if Laws, Clegg et al are still senior in the Lib Dems in 2015, this could prove a complicating factor.
Meanwhile, in Laws’s account, at one stage he gleefully documents how Danny Alexander “joked” about Ed Miliband’s ties to the unions during a discussion over pension reform and says that Ed “tried to look mystified” by the remark (p.175 in 22 Days), not exactly representative of a diplomatic attitude on Laws’s part towards Miliband, despite his claims elsewhere in the book to have tried to have maintained a dialogue. This disagreement would appear important, as of all the things that could determine the outcome of a 2015 hung parliament, the approach that Ed Miliband (and to a lesser extent, Balls) take on coalition and the nature of their relationships with key Lib Dems could be decisive. Since the election, it has been known that there have been quiet talks between Labour and senior Lib Dems, especially Vince Cable, but it is clear that if Laws, Clegg et al are still senior in the Lib Dems in 2015, this could prove a complicating factor.
Also crucial is the disagreement between the
two accounts on what substantive issues divided the Lib Dem and Labour
negotiators. Both describe the final Lib-Lab meeting as being unproductive, but
while Adonis acknowledges that there were problems in various policy areas, he
maintains that a Lib Dem about-face on the issue of deficit reduction and their
concerns about the general legitimacy of a Lib-Lab deal were the main problems,
quoting Nick Clegg as telling Gordon both that economic policy was still a
problem and that “the issue between us is not one of substance, it’s one of
workability and legitimacy” (p.130 in 5
Days). He contrasts Nick Clegg’s election-time warnings about austerity and
relative similarity to Labour’s Darling plan with the apparent Lib Dem
enthusiasm for the Osborne deficit reduction agenda during the talks (an issue
on which Clegg has admitted
he changed his mind a few weeks before the election, rather than after it) and
also quotes Laws’s own observations about the need for faster cuts and the Lib
Dem shift to the economic right in the late 2000s.
Adonis also takes issue with Laws for Laws’s portrayal of a friendly meeting between Alastair Darling and Vince Cable on economic strategy, separate from the main negotiations, as just “another Gordon Brown wheeze” (p.155 in 5 Days) Interestingly, Adonis also states in his account that economic proposals from Labour had to be sent directly to Nick Clegg’s office due to apparent antipathy between Clegg and Cable, and he also rebuts an assertion by Laws that Labour’s failure to include Darling in its negotiation team showed a lack of seriousness, given that Cable was not included in the Lib Dem team either. It is this insidious rightward drift on economic policy, and also Clegg’s and Laws’s close personal affiliations with the centre-right, that Adonis believes led them to choose an alliance with the Conservatives based around austerity over a progressive alliance with Labour based around measured deficit reduction, something Labourites would be well-served to keep in mind in both the 2015 election campaign and any future hung parliaments.
Adonis also takes issue with Laws for Laws’s portrayal of a friendly meeting between Alastair Darling and Vince Cable on economic strategy, separate from the main negotiations, as just “another Gordon Brown wheeze” (p.155 in 5 Days) Interestingly, Adonis also states in his account that economic proposals from Labour had to be sent directly to Nick Clegg’s office due to apparent antipathy between Clegg and Cable, and he also rebuts an assertion by Laws that Labour’s failure to include Darling in its negotiation team showed a lack of seriousness, given that Cable was not included in the Lib Dem team either. It is this insidious rightward drift on economic policy, and also Clegg’s and Laws’s close personal affiliations with the centre-right, that Adonis believes led them to choose an alliance with the Conservatives based around austerity over a progressive alliance with Labour based around measured deficit reduction, something Labourites would be well-served to keep in mind in both the 2015 election campaign and any future hung parliaments.
Adonis is also more certain about the
parliamentary arithmetic that would have underpinned a progressive realignment anti-Tory
‘traffic light’ coalition; he stresses that the DUP were angry with the
Conservatives for allying with the UUP in 2010, that Plaid Cymru and the SNP would
face electoral oblivion if they brought down an anti-Tory coalition on
confidence and that once the speaker’s office and absentee Sinn Fein MPs were
accounted for, a working majority in the House of Commons would be 320 MPs
rather than the oft-quoted 326. Towards this line, Labour and the Lib Dems
combined had 315 MPs to the Tories’ 307, while the DUP and various centre-left
representatives (the SNP, PC, SDLP, Alliance, the Greens and pro-Labour
Independent Sylvia Hermon) represented a further 23. David Laws, however, makes
clear that he did not view the prospects of a coalition in quite such a
positive light (“it seemed to be that such a coalition would be more ‘car crash’
than ‘traffic light’” – p.93, 22 Days),
states that a confidence and supply deal was planned with the DUP (not
mentioned by Adonis) and does not refer to the electoral pressure that the SNP
and PC would likely face to support a coalition.
This leads to an interesting split, wherein Adonis was a passionate believer that a Lib-Lab coalition could work and criticises both the Lib Dems and much of the Labour Party for failing to want it enough, while Laws attacks Labour for failing to make a Lib-Lab coalition viable despite clearly not thinking it very plausible himself, contradicting himself somewhat. Adonis also makes crucial observations on the nature of coalition in the closing epilogue of his book, discussing how the supposed ‘pluralism’ of a multi-party centre-left coalition is not in his view preferable to a majoritarian Labour government commanding a ‘One Nation’ coalition of support behind it, but also how if coalitions are necessitated by hung parliament, it is important that the junior partner does not end up “in government but not coalition” (i.e. without genuine power and influence in the most important government ministries and thus without remotely equal footing to their senior ‘partner’, the position Clegg’s Liberal Democrats appear to find themselves in at current – p.164).
This leads to an interesting split, wherein Adonis was a passionate believer that a Lib-Lab coalition could work and criticises both the Lib Dems and much of the Labour Party for failing to want it enough, while Laws attacks Labour for failing to make a Lib-Lab coalition viable despite clearly not thinking it very plausible himself, contradicting himself somewhat. Adonis also makes crucial observations on the nature of coalition in the closing epilogue of his book, discussing how the supposed ‘pluralism’ of a multi-party centre-left coalition is not in his view preferable to a majoritarian Labour government commanding a ‘One Nation’ coalition of support behind it, but also how if coalitions are necessitated by hung parliament, it is important that the junior partner does not end up “in government but not coalition” (i.e. without genuine power and influence in the most important government ministries and thus without remotely equal footing to their senior ‘partner’, the position Clegg’s Liberal Democrats appear to find themselves in at current – p.164).
Overall, I enjoyed Adonis’s book more and
found parts of Laws’s remembering of the chain of events somewhat implausible,
unfair and partisan, although admittedly I myself cannot be an objective judge of which account might be plausible given my own partisan leanings and was always bound to enjoy Adonis’s take more, in a sense.
Both were however detailed and interesting. Laws’s is more of a personal and
wide-ranging text is some respects, providing more backstory, an account of the
start of the coalition itself and, of course, his deeply personal account of
the drama caused by the late May 2010 revelations about his personal life and
his subsequent resignation.
Importantly, each man noticeably contradicts himself in his core summary of what they felt happened during the five crucial days, I felt. Adonis acknowledges that Labour did not want to govern and that this was a key problem, but nevertheless prefers to focus slightly more of his fire on Clegg’s pro-Tory and pro-austerity leanings as an explanation for the final outcome of the negotiations. Meanwhile, Laws makes clear that he feels that a traffic-light coalition would lack parliamentary stability and democratic legitimacy and also believed there was a lack of Lib-Lab agreement on the economy, but nevertheless blames Labour politicians that had exactly the same view of the situation for ‘sabotaging’ promising negotiations.
Either book will give you a broadly similar and detailed account of the timeline of events and of much of deep political intrigue of those five fascinating days, but nevertheless its hard not to be left with the sense that another more impartial, fly-on-the-wall account would be invaluable if are ever to truly understand how the current coalition came about and what awaits the country in any future negotiations. Perhaps only the next hung parliament, which may be as soon as 2015 but will hopefully be later, will truly answer some of these lingering questions. But Adonis’s warnings that Labour must both be willing to fight for government when the time comes and be wary of the ideological inclinations of some Lib Dems are both lessons that Labour should take to heart.
Importantly, each man noticeably contradicts himself in his core summary of what they felt happened during the five crucial days, I felt. Adonis acknowledges that Labour did not want to govern and that this was a key problem, but nevertheless prefers to focus slightly more of his fire on Clegg’s pro-Tory and pro-austerity leanings as an explanation for the final outcome of the negotiations. Meanwhile, Laws makes clear that he feels that a traffic-light coalition would lack parliamentary stability and democratic legitimacy and also believed there was a lack of Lib-Lab agreement on the economy, but nevertheless blames Labour politicians that had exactly the same view of the situation for ‘sabotaging’ promising negotiations.
Either book will give you a broadly similar and detailed account of the timeline of events and of much of deep political intrigue of those five fascinating days, but nevertheless its hard not to be left with the sense that another more impartial, fly-on-the-wall account would be invaluable if are ever to truly understand how the current coalition came about and what awaits the country in any future negotiations. Perhaps only the next hung parliament, which may be as soon as 2015 but will hopefully be later, will truly answer some of these lingering questions. But Adonis’s warnings that Labour must both be willing to fight for government when the time comes and be wary of the ideological inclinations of some Lib Dems are both lessons that Labour should take to heart.
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