5 Days That Changed Britain
Last week’s documentary ‘Five Days That Changed Britain’ on BBC TV described the negotiations between the Tories and the Lib-Dems, and the Labor Party with the Lib-Dems during the 5 days immediately following the General Election in May, to cobble together a workable coalition. Amazingly, the talking heads who described their part in the proceedings (all the main players with the exception of Gordon Brown himself) revealed how monumentally bad their negotiating was; some might say they reveled in their ineptitude.
Ed Balls admitted that the Labor team had no strategic plan, no understanding of objectives, no bottom line, and no outline proposal to make at their first face-to-face with the Lib-Dems. As a result, the meeting was an unsurprising shambles, from which the Labor side never recovered. David Cameron admitted that he was misled by reports that Labor had offered the Lib-Dems electoral reform without a referendum, which was not true. Nick Clegg didn’t disabuse his new found friend of this mistake. As a result the Tories made concessions on electoral reform which were unnecessarily generous. We all watched these events unfold on TV – this was hardly the most secure or secretive negotiation! What were their researchers and informers doing to allow this misinformation to take hold and influence the outcome of the negotiation so fundamentally?
The time frame played a big part in their discomfort. Greece was in meltdown, and Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy looked like they might follow. The money markets needed a speedy resolution of the electoral impasse in the UK to prevent the jitters crossing the English Channel. So the skill deficit of the politicians who made up the negotiating teams of the three political parties was exaggerated by