I do not understand the moral high dudgeon of various Brit observers contemplating the possibility of a Liberal-Labour coalition -- which flared briefly as a live possibility when Gordon Brown resigned on Monday (his personality and perhaps track record had apparently impeded prior talks). Here's Alex Massie in today's Times (New York):
...looking back, it was touch and go. On Monday evening it seemed as though Mr. Brown’s audacious, last-gasp maneuver might work. Although Mr. Clegg had suggested that the Conservatives’ plurality in last Thursday’s vote gave them the first right to form a government, Mr. Brown revealed on Monday that the Liberal Democrats were courting Labour.
Then, a seemingly endless parade of Labour ministers appeared on television insisting that, despite losing 91 seats in the House of Commons and getting two million votes fewer than the Conservatives, they had not actually lost the election. Like Monty Python’s Black Knight, they claimed defeat was “only a flesh wound” and nothing serious enough to require a change of government.
And so the electorate was asked to contemplate the extraordinary spectacle of a Labour-Liberal Democrat “Losers’ Alliance.” While constitutionally permissible, such an arrangement can’t be squared with any residual British sense of fair play. More pertinent, it wouldn’t even have commanded a majority in the House of Commons, and would have had to purchase the support of Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish parties.
Fortunately, sanity prevailed. Talks with Labour broke down...To those steeped in the norms of British politics (especially Tories), perhaps a Lib-Lab coalition would have seemed like an end run. There seems to be an expectation that the single party with the most votes, whether or not it wins a majority, has not only first dibs on forming a government but a moral right to form one, barring extraordinary circumstances.
