5 Days in May: The Coalition and Beyond
Andrew Adonis
Language: English
Pages: 208
ISBN: 1849545669
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In the wake of the inconclusive May 2010 general election Lord Adonis and other senior Labour figures sat down for talks with the Liberal Democrat leadership to try to persuade them to govern Britain together in a Lib - Lab coalition. The talks ultimately resulted in failure for Labour amid recriminations on both sides and the accusation that the Lib Dems had conducted a dutch auction, inviting Labour to outbid the Tories on a shopping list of demands. Despite calls for him to give his own account of this historic sequence of events, Adonis has kept his own counsel until now. Published to coincide with the third anniversary of the general election that would eventually produce an historic first coalition government since the Second World War, 5 Days In May is a remarkable and important insider account of the dramatic negotiations that led to its formation. It also offers the author's views on what the future holds as the run-up to the next election begins. 5 Days in May presents a unique eyewitness account of a pivotal moment in political history.
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technical and legislative reasons, a referendum could not be held before May 2011 at the earliest. I pushed back strongly, and drew up plans for a referendum by November (2010) at the latest. In 1997, devolution to Scotland and Wales was carried swiftly on the back of successful referendums held barely four months after the general election. The Labour government in the 1970s made the mistake of delaying devolution referendums until late in its term, when they simply became votes on the
waiting media in the Cabinet Office building at 70 Whitehall, where the Lib Dems had met the Tories the evening before. He suggested instead Portcullis House, the new parliamentary building opposite the Houses of Parliament at the top of Whitehall, which would be deserted on a Saturday afternoon. So at 3.45 p.m., Peter, Ed Miliband, Gavin Kelly and I walked through to the basement of the Cabinet Office to be driven in Peter’s Jag, which was parked there, across Whitehall to the Norman Shaw block
presenter of Newsnight. Stewart WOOD (Lord Wood of Anfield) – Special Adviser to Gordon Brown in No. 10. Adviser to Ed Miliband since 2010. Tony WOODLEY – General Secretary of Unite 2007–11. Shaun WOODWARD – Northern Ireland Secretary in the Brown Cabinet 2010. Tony WRIGHT – Labour MP until 2010. PREFACE The inconclusive result of the general election held on 6 May 2010 precipitated one of the great dramas of modern British politics. It lasted five days, while Gordon Brown and David
speechwriter; and Stewart Wood, a policy adviser – headed from the King Malcolm Hotel to his detached red-brick constituency home on the hilltop overlooking North Queensferry and the Firth of Forth. When they arrived the only person downstairs was Sarah Brown, watching a film. ‘I suppose we had better get moving,’ she remarked laconically as she went upstairs to wake Gordon. The team set up in the dining room to make calls while awaiting the first constituency results. These were late coming
MPs supporting different possible combinations in the House of Commons – were to be a constant refrain of the next five days. By Friday lunchtime the final tally of seats by party was to be: Conservative 306 (plus one likely Tory seat to be filled at a separate election), Labour 258, Lib Dem 57 and others 28 – almost identical to the exit poll those fifteen long hours before. So there wasn’t an overall Lab–Lib majority to be had. The Lab–Lib total was 315; an overall majority 326. On Friday
