Hung Parliament - Tory/Lib pact with Cable as Chancellor.

[Gromit]

Apparently that is a prospect if we get into that situation.

I have been very impressed with Cable and not at all impressed with Osborne, so I am liking the idea.

What do our resident Tories think, could you share power with the Liberals, and would a Liberal as Chancellor work?

http://www.dailymail....t-Treasury-talks.html

[jno]

he's been talking to the Treasury too

http://www.guardian.c...cable-hung-parliament

The implication is that he might get to be chancellor in a Lib-Lab pact too. He does seem to have more nous than Osborne. Darling seems to be competent enough; his big problem is Brown, and I suppose Cable's would be too if he was in a pact with Labour, but presumably Brown couldn't fire him without bringing down the pact and the government.

[rov1200]

It is hard to imagine a Liberal MP becoming chancellor of a hung parliament. All that will happen is he will be given a voice by the other parties but to take overall control NO!

[modeller]

I can not take the Liberals seriously. They are living in a world of compromise and fudge.
Their belief that a hung parliament would give them power is a fantasy. As for a Liberal Chancellor neither of the main parties would give such a powerful post to any minority party. They would rather call another election later in the year than allow that to happen. I agree with the Chairman of our local Labour party who said that he would rather have the Tories in power than share power with minority groups.

[Old_Geezer]

I'm very unimpressed with party politics, and the price for getting Vince as potential chancellor would probably be a change in the voting system to seal the concept of political parties into the process even more than it already is. Undemocratic, far too high a price to pay.

I'll only support the hung parliament when I see the scaffold being built.

[rojash]

"What do our resident Tories think"
Can they do that then? I hadn't noticed...

[jno]

I'm surprised that there any such thing as resident Tories; I thought they were all non-doms

[youngmafbog]

It is an intersting thought, however I see a couple of problems.
1) I could not see any leader, Brown or Cameron being held to ransom
2) By far the biggest problem would be the perception of the markets. GB is in a bit of a precarious position at the moment particularly around our credit rating and standing in the world. I am not sure the markets would see this as a good thing.

[R1Geezer]

ok rojash so if your're not in Noo Labour you can't think! What j Arthur you are!

[Seadragon]

You better hope that the Tories can think Rojash as they're taking power from the corrupt Labourites.

[jake-the-peg]

(If we can all grow up and stop the silly slagging)

One of the problems with hung parliaments is the fact that we don't have fixed term parliaments.

It's too easy for a coalition to form and mess about for a few months unitil someone fancies their chances of getting a majority and then pulling out and forcing another general election in 6 months.

But I think Liberal economic policy is much closer to Labour than Tory. Add that to the fact that a minority Labour administration would be more dependant on Liberal support than a Tory one (who I think would engineer another election quickly) and you see that a Lib/Lab pact is likely to be more attractive to Clegg than a Lib/Tory one.

Personally I think that if Cameron wants to see the inside of number 10 he has to win outright.

That's a fair ask when you remember that he is starting from a smaller base than Michael Foot had!

[rojash]

R1Geezer, I don't seem to recall claiming to support Labour (in fact, I'm pretty sure that in previous posts I've made it clear that I don't).

[modeller]

Is this the same Vince Cable who praised the bank's profligate lending in the 2000 and 6 years later said he had prophesied the collapse ?
Is this the same VC who deplores terrorism and yet voted against the government when they wanted to toughen up our response to it.?

[TTG]

Anything is better than the shower that are in at the moment.

[jno]

that could have been me you're thinking of, modeller. I don't like terrorism either, but having policemen stopping people taking photos of St Paul's in the name of 'security' is bananas. If Cable wants less extreme action than the government's dreams of total control, that's fine by me.