Will today be seen as the start of the LAB-LD coalition? Good piece by the FT’s Janan Ganesh on.ft.com/YmUynn twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st…

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) March 18, 2013

Janan Ganesh has a good piece for tomorrow’s FT in which he suggests that the key political development that today symbolises is the bringing together Miliband and Clegg. He writes:-

“…The news that Labour politicians are revising their low opinion of Mr Clegg will not surprise senior Tories, who mocked him in opposition only to lament his effectiveness at getting his way in government. But it should perturb them, as should the alacrity with which Mr Clegg spun Monday’s agreement on press regulation as a victory for himself and Mr Miliband against the prime minister.

If the next election results in a hung parliament – still the most likely outcome, despite Labour’s current poll lead – there will be few obstacles to a red-yellow deal. Until now, Mr Clegg’s determination to remain leader of his party beyond 2015 has been interpreted as a problem for Labour, not least by Labour themselves. Their self-pitying notion that he chose to govern with the Tories out of brazen ideological choice is giving way, as the wounds heal, to a grudging, unspoken recognition that cold parliamentary arithmetic limited his options….

I still think that LAB is heading for a majority and that there’ll be no need for a LAB-LD coalition. The electoral challenge for the red team is that much easier.

Mike Smithson

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