Across the pond

Despite the thousands of words being written in the papers and on the web sites, and the chat on  the broadcast media, Nick Clegg does not have to agonise over whether he should choose to back the Conservatives or Labour. An alliance with Labour does not have any hope of firm government.

There is no agreement in the Labour Party as  to who should be the new leader. Which is why Gordon Brown was not asked to step down a year or two ago.The  favourite candidate then  was David Miliband, who decided to support Brown instead. This time around he is again the favourite candidate.

Unlike Brown he is not a  bully. And he is younger, and is therefore believed to be more in touch with the concerns of young people today.  The doubts about him, include his younger brother, who today is said to be thinking of standing against him.

Is it going to be Cain and Abel trumpeted the media.

This is nonsense. Ed Miliband is a very long shot indeed for the Labour leadership.

But everyone knows that the Labour Party is undecided as to who its new leader should be. Because that is why Gordon Brown has led them into this election, not because his colleagues did not want to usher  him into a dignnified retirement. But because they could not agree on who should succeed him.

In terms of policies the Lib Dems are  closer to Labour than the Conservatives. But an alliance with Labour cannot provide stable government quicklly. Because Labour Party supporters have no agreement as to who why want to replace Brown.

They need to take time, to decide who shall be their next leader. But the country does not have time.

We need a new government in a week or two. Not in the month at least it will take to elect a new Labour Party leader.

And remember that Brown has  been under fire because he is un-elected. Not just by the nation. But by the Labour Party, many of whom did not want him to be the leader.

British democracy is a party  democracy. Not a Presidential democracy. Brown demolished his opponents in his own cabinet and demanded the support of the party, with no contest.

That is not democracy.

It is dictatorship.

So Clegg has Hobson’s choice. He cannot deliver stable government by an alliance with Labour, because he cannot predict, who is going to emerge as the leader of New New Labour, in a month or so’s time.

So he should be concentrating on how to work with David Cameron, whose party  want  to usher in a series of cuts which will hit the poorest, rather than the rich.

Because in Camerono’s terms, the rich need to be nurtured, because they are the ‘entrepeneurs’ who will provide the private sector jobs to fuel our recovery.

That will be their priority.

What Clegg needs to do, is to use his power to minimise the Conservative tendency, to get the peasants to take the strain.

He needs to say clearlly to Cameron that if this recession, when the poor are gcing to be  hit, he has to get the rich to share the strain.

Not abolishing inheritance tax on assets,  below £100,o00.

The important question is not  whether to align with the Tories or Labour. It is whether he can work with Cameron to steer the country out of its present problems.

Cameron, in his leadership bid and subsequently has styled himself as a Macmillan and Disraeli Conservative. He inherited a party which was dominated by disciples of Thatcherism and Norman Tebbitt.

He made them electable again, with the help of Lord Ashcroft’s money.

But his party are not greatful. They think he would have got a bigger majority if he had behaved like Thatcher.