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Nick Clegg 'propped up' Gordon Brown to seal Tory deal: Insider account reveals Lib Dems never wanted Coalition with Labour
By Simon Walters
Last updated at 10:38 PM on 13th November 2010
Buckingham Palace helped David Cameron and Nick Clegg keep Gordon Brown in Downing Street in the days after he lost the Election to make it easier for the Coalition to take power, a former Cabinet Minister claims tonight.
The Palace, together with the Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders, made Mr Brown believe he still had a chance of clinging to power – even though they knew he didn’t – because it was feared he might resign too quickly and leave Britain without a Government.
The ploy to prop up Mr Brown gave Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg vital extra hours to seal their political alliance and avoided plunging the Queen into a constitutional crisis, with no Prime Minister.
Ploy: The Lib Dems never really wanted to do a deal with Brown and be 'chained to the Labour Government's decaying corpse'
The disclosure comes in a new book by former Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws, based on secret notes of the dramatic talks between the three parties after the Election failed to produce an overall winner.
Mr Laws, a senior Liberal Democrat who was present throughout the discussions, gives the first blow-by-blow insider’s account of the high-octane and often acrimonious exchanges between the party leaders and rival negotiating teams.
His book, 22 Days In May, exclusively serialised in The Mail on Sunday from today, reveals how:
- The Lib Dems never really wanted to do a deal with Mr Brown and be ‘chained to the Labour Government’s decaying corpse’.
- Ed Miliband was reduced to the role of ‘tea boy’ in the talks – and revealed that he could not upset the unions.
- Peter Mandelson responded to Mr Laws’s support for a mansion tax on £2 million-plus houses by protesting: ‘Surely the rich have suffered enough?’
- When the Coalition talks stalled, panicking David Cameron exclaimed: ‘People will soon be asking who the hell is running the country.’
- After being harangued by ‘impossible’ Mr Brown, Mr Clegg cried out: ‘That man!’ – and fellow Lib Dem Danny Alexander called the former Prime Minister ‘absolutely barmy’.
- Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman deliberately sabotaged any prospect of a Lib-Lab pact.
The book, which makes extensive use of a near-verbatim record of the talks kept by long-serving Lib Dem aide Alison Suttie, marks Mr Laws’s return to the political limelight following his shock resignation from the Cabinet just weeks into the Coalition.
He was forced to step down when it emerged that the secretly gay MP had claimed £40,000 in second-home expenses for renting a room from his partner, James Lundie, a lobbyist.
As long as Mr Laws is not censured too severely when the results of an official inquiry are published, he is widely expected to return to the Cabinet within months. Mr Cameron has called him ‘a very effective politician’.
Desperate times: Mr Brown's claim that he could work with the Lib Dems was derided by Mr Laws
In his book, Mr Laws gives a vivid description of the scene as desperate Mr Brown begged Mr Clegg to let Labour stay in power, not realising that exasperated Mr Clegg had already decided to do a deal with Mr Cameron.
‘Brown urged Nick to think again,’ writes Mr Laws. ‘ “It was quite embarrassing actually,” Nick reported to us later. “I was very uncomfortable. He seemed to be pleading with me.” ’
It was at this point that Mr Brown was led to think – falsely – that Labour still had a chance of hanging on, so he did not go to the Palace and resign.
‘Everyone wanted Brown to hang on until a deal had been agreed. Britain was not supposed to be left without a Government,’ Mr Laws writes. Nor was it just Cameron and Clegg who pulled the wool over Mr Brown’s eyes: the Palace and Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell were involved too.
‘The Civil Service, the Palace, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives all wanted Brown to remain in place so that the handover of power happened seamlessly. It just about worked.’
The Queen’s linkman to the negotiations was her private secretary Christopher Geidt, who was monitoring the progress of the Tory-Lib Dem talks in the Cabinet Office.
In the thick of it: David Laws
Mr Geidt, a former Foreign Office mandarin, was briefed to observe proceedings and keep the Queen informed.
He was to protect her by advising her to appoint a new Prime Minister only when a decision was ‘clear and uncontroversial’.
By mid-afternoon on the Tuesday, when Mr Brown realised that the Lib Dems were heading for a deal with the Tories, he was impatient to resign – but Mr Geidt told him that, constitutionally, he had to hold off until a formal pact had been confirmed.
When Mr Brown finally went to the Queen later that day to resign, Mr Geidt was waiting to meet him.
Even from the very start of the negotiations, Mr Clegg was irritated by the way Mr Brown went ‘on and on’ at him.
As the former Prime Minister listed Labour policies, Mr Clegg interrupted him: ‘No! No! Don’t. Please don’t! I know where you are heading. I have to start with the Conservatives, I gave that pledge.’
Mr Clegg made it clear to Mr Brown that a Lib-Lab deal was unlikely. ‘How could our parties overcome the accusations about two parties which came second and third forming a government, and could we actually form a stable government? I don’t want to trip up over my own shoelaces on this,’ he said.
After another bout of hectoring by Mr Brown, ‘Nick put the phone down and groaned, “That man!” ’
Mr Laws derides Mr Brown’s claim that he could work with the Lib Dems. ‘It sounded like a script that someone else had written. The great Labour tribalist was making a deathbed conversion to the benefits of co-operation with another party.’
By contrast, Mr Clegg and Mr Cameron hit it off straight away. Mr Laws says of the talks with the Tories: ‘We sat around a conference table surveying each other with the surprise of people who had known each other for years and suddenly found themselves at the altar, having never quite seen the possibility.’
On top of the difficulty of dealing with Mr Brown, Mr Laws says the Labour negotiating team was split into ‘two separate teams – one wanted a deal, the other didn’t’. Lord Mandelson was ‘sceptical’ though amenable and Lord Adonis was keen. But there was a ‘gulf of enthusiasm’ between them and Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Harriet Harman.
Partnership: Clegg was irritated by Brown's 'embarrassing' pleas for a deal. By contrast, he and Cameron hit it off straight away
Mr Laws says Mr Balls killed off any chance of Labour backing voting reforms, calling it ‘a calculated wrecking device’. He writes: ‘It was clear that if we went into coalition with Labour, we would not be establishing a new government, we would be chaining ourselves to a decaying corpse.
‘The Conservatives had treated us as another Opposition party on an equal footing. The Labour team, certainly the Eds and Harriet, treated us to policy lectures.’
Ed Miliband was reduced to tea boy during the talks. ‘Someone suggested we needed refreshments, and Miliband stumped up the money for teas and pastries. It was about the first financial concession that Labour had made to us,’ Mr Laws writes.
More embarrassingly, Mr Laws reveals how the talks highlighted Mr Miliband’s close links with the unions, whose votes got him elected as Labour leader. ‘When I raised public sector pensions reform, Miliband looked horrified. “Oh no,” he said. “We cannot go further than our existing agreements with the unions.” ’
The disclosures by Mr Laws follow separate damaging claims that Mr Clegg secretly planned to drop his pledge to scrap university tuition fees months before polling day.
Explore more:
- People:
- Peter Mandelson,
- Danny Alexander,
- Ed Balls,
- David Cameron,
- Harriet Harman,
- Nick Clegg,
- Gordon Brown
- Places:
- Buckingham Palace
Comments (33)
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Now I understand the expression on Sir Gus O'Donnell's face when he greeted David Cameron on that eventful day.
What a sad lot the Labour MP's are.
- John N, Bournemouth UK, 13/11/2010 23:12
from the start cameron and clegg hit it off ,says it all,oxbridge/public school so not a clue about real life(could say the same about millibands though so nothing will change) ps did not laws make his money as a trader in the city or something simular so he knows about real people then
- jp, newhall, 13/11/2010 23:12
If you didn't feel like weeping before this might just tip you over the edge.
- heard it before, west coast, 13/11/2010 23:12
The Condemn coalition was cut and dried even before the election took place.
- Lost In My Own Insanity, Voice Of Resistance, Say No To The NWO, 13/11/2010 23:10
rubbish, the queen would be in her element, might even get a chance to put her thoughts out about what has been going on for the past 30 odd years.
you want the truth, christopher story worked for the queen, google him or go to worldreports his website.
yes they worked behind her back, all of them empty suits acting for the bankers and corporations who are bleeding us dry to turn england into a third world marxist state, they are doing a dam good job of it to.
our jobs have been farmed to europe, india china, the treasonous act was paid for using our tax money, not just to promise tax breaks and no loss of earnings to the companies, but a lot of the time we actually funded the new factories under un third world charters.
- steve, newton abbot, 13/11/2010 23:10
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1329498/Nick-Clegg-propped-Gordon-Brown-seal-Tory-deal-Insider-account-reveals-Lib-Dems-wanted-Coalition-Labour.html#ixzz15DHkEFWB
Well, nothing surprising here! We knew we were governed by cowards and liars and led by a sovereign who is a traitor who has already signed away our country to the EU.
- Judith C, London, England, 13/11/2010 23:15
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