After the Public Hung Parliament, One Man Has Cut the Noose

13th May, 2010 by Webmaster

Confused by the recent post-election chaos? No need to fear, Niall Cruickshank is here with an easy-to-digest summary of the past few days and some of his thoughts.

On Tuesday May 11 at 20:35 BST, David Cameron was appointed the new Prime Minister of Great Britain, bringing to an end of five days of uncertainty and speculation. Gordon Brown gave a very gracious resignation statement; when the moment came I felt a little sad inside.

Over the past few days the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have been meeting to form a coalition government. The Liberal Democrats were the ‘kingmakers’ and the whole thing hinged on whether a deal could be done with the Conservatives. When the Liberal Democrats announced they were seeking formal negotiations with the Labour Party, most people were not pleased, accusing Nick Clegg of double dealing and playing both the Conservatives and Labour. The Liberal Democrats should have spoken to Labour only after talks with the Conservatives had broken down, this made me fearful that uncertainty would happen for a few more days, but it was ended last night.

What has undoubtedly made the speculation and uncertainty worse was the lack of hard information that we received, we only received short statements which were very vague, buzzwords such as ‘constructive’ were bound around leaving us to ponder what exactly was happening, secrecy was essential but in this new politics a little more transparency would have been useful.

A Labour-Liberal Democrat pact would have not worked. It would be rejected by the public, do damage to the Liberal Democrats and would still have been short of an overall majority.