May 8, 2010
Electoral Demand Stalls Coalition Deal in Britain
LONDON — Talks about forming a new government resumed Saturday amid concern that continuing uncertainty would shake world financial markets when they reopen Monday, but the prospects of a deal between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats by that deadline appeared slim.
As an intensive round of negotiations among the parties’ power brokers began Saturday, the Conservatives appeared strongly resistant to the Liberal Democrats’ main demand: a change in the voting system to help smaller parties gain more seats in future parliamentary elections. The most that David Cameron, the Conservative leader, seemed ready to concede was that the voting system could be debated by an all-party parliamentary committee.
The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, seemed divided over whether they should seek a union with the Conservatives or with the Labour Party, which many among the left-leaning Liberal Democrats see as more philosophically compatible than the Conservatives, but led by a man, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is widely unpopular even in his own party, and at risk of becoming more so by not quitting in the wake of Labour’s poor election showing.
Possibly reflecting low expectations of any early deal between his rivals, Mr. Brown left Downing Street in mid-afternoon to return to his family home outside Edinburgh. His aides said he would remain away at least through Sunday.
A new twist in the increasingly fraught situation came when two Labour lawmakers, Kate Hoey and John Mann, became the first elected Labour representatives since Thursday’s vote to demand that Mr. Brown resign, opening the way for a new Labour leader who would make a governing pact with the Liberal Democrats more likely. The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, said repeatedly during the campaign that he would not be party to giving Mr. Brown “squatter’s rights” at 10 Downing Street.
Toward the end of the day, Mr. Cameron and Mr. Clegg slipped away from the horde of reporters following them and met at a government office in Whitehall without aides for 70 minutes, for what Conservative aides described as “a constructive and amicable” exchange. Mr. Clegg followed that with a 15-minute call to Mr. Brown. No details were released.
The political situation left many in Britain bewildered. After seeing their country plunge from the heady days of debt-fueled prosperity earlier this decade to economic shocks and staggering deficits, people here now find their political system, too, in at least temporary disarray.
The pressures on Mr. Clegg appeared to be mounting Saturday, most likely delaying any end to the political confusion. As he met party power brokers, about 1,000 demonstrators gathered outside the Liberal Democrats’ headquarters, declaiming against talks with the Conservatives and hoisting banners saying “Make my vote count!” and “Votes, not moats!” — a reference to one of the more audacious claims for reimbursement revealed during last year’s parliamentary expenses scandal. That claim, filed by a Conservative, asked the government to pay for the cleaning of his country house moat.
When Mr. Clegg emerged, he tried to reassure the crowd, saying that voting reform remained a priority. Under Britain’s current winner-takes-all voting system, like that used in most American elections, small parties can earn a significant percentage of the total votes cast, but win few legislative seats.
The Conservatives’ position appeared to be hardening too, with several senior party members going on television to say emphatically that Mr. Cameron should not even consider proposals on proportional representation that would change a voting system that had served the party well for generations.
As the political uncertainties grew, commentators said that even if a coalition were formed, it was likely to be so fragile that a new election might be needed later this year to try to achieve a clear majority for one of the two main parties, Labour or the Conservatives, or at least a clearer indication of what kind of government — and voting system — Britain wants.
But if the Liberal Democrats seemed likely to balk at any pact with the Conservatives without movement on the voting system, they faced a stumbling block of potentially even greater magnitude in establishing a coalition government with Labour and its widely unpopular leader, Mr. Brown. Mr. Clegg has won plaudits from many of Britain’s major newspapers for sticking to a campaign pledge to negotiate first with the Conservatives.
The Conservatives took 306 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons, 20 seats short of a majority. After 13 years in power, Labour won just 258 seats, posting its worst election performance since 1931. The Liberal Democrats won five fewer seats than during the last election in 2005.
Although more talks with the Conservatives are set for Sunday, Mr. Clegg appeared to be signaling Saturday that voters should not expect a quick decision. He said he would not be driven by “artificial time scales,” including the concern that failure to reach a deal could put new pressure on the pound and on the yields demanded by investors for the bonds that finance the country’s enormous government deficit.
At the same time, some Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians began putting forward a new arithmetic that could further delay any resolution, feeding their spin to reporters who rushed from one spot to another around the square mile of Whitehall that is the seat of Parliament, the parties’ headquarters and 10 Downing Street. The politicians said that although the Conservatives won 10.7 million total votes, Labor and the Liberal Democrats together won 15.4 million. That, they said, showed there was a “progressive” majority among voters that should be reflected in a Labour-Liberal Democrat government.
Ben Bradshaw, culture minister in the Labour cabinet, was one of a parade of senior Labour figures on Whitehall’s sidewalks who made that argument. He also added a claim that has had many television anchors looking stupefied, when he suggested that Labour’s poor performance was actually “no small victory for Gordon Brown, who deprived the Conservatives of a majority.”
The riposte to those claims among Labour’s critics included withering portrayals in many British newspapers of Mr. Brown as a man in deep denial. Mr. Brown has taken the high road in public, saying the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats should take as much time as they need for their exchanges, and that he would re-enter the picture only if those talks “come to nothing.” He has also made sonorous statements about his obligation to carry on with prime ministerial duties, including dealing with international jitters over the economic crisis in Greece.
But that produced a provocative front page in the Sun, the country’s most widely circulated newspaper. The paper — which in this election abandoned the support it gave to Labour in every election since 1997 and embraced the Conservatives — has made Mr. Brown its favorite target.
In its Saturday edition, it ran a story headlined “Whitehall Property Scandal” that began: “A man aged 59 was squatting in a luxury home near the Houses of Parliament last night. The squatter, named as a Mr. Gordon Brown from Scotland, was refusing to budge from the Georgian townhouse in Downing Street, central London — denying entry to its rightful owner,” identified by the Sun as Mr. Cameron.
The story encapsulated the political quandary facing Mr. Clegg, who was the first to use the squatter imagery during the campaign. Anthony Howard, a veteran political commentator, offered his own metaphor of the risks for Mr. Clegg if he throws his backing to Mr. Brown. “If you hug a chimney sweep, you get covered in grime,” Mr. Howard said.
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