Lib Dem ministers?
- 20 Jun 07, 09:28 AM
There have been talks about it but there will be no Lib Dem bottoms on the seats of ministerial cars - not in the near future at least. So says Ming Campbell (hear for yourself here) responding to .
The story came as a surprise to the two Lib Dem MPs - Vince Cable and Nick Clegg - who the paper speculated might join a Brown Cabinet. It will have come as a shock to many party activists who have always feared that Sir Menzies's principal aim is a coalition deal with Labour after the next election. After all he was one of the two names in the frame when Tony Blair flirted with the idea of having Lib Dems in his Cabinet.
Intriguingly, whilst he has ruled out "any" Lib Dem joining the government, Gordon Brown's spokesman will only rule out Lib Dem MPs. The implication is that the new prime minister might invite peers or non Parliamentarians to join his government. Fevered speculation and office gossip throws up two possible names for job offers - Lord Oakeshott, a Treasury spokesperson and, like many on Team Brown, a keen Arsenal fan and Lord Ashdown, the former party leader who's now chairing a Commission on the future of Iraq.
More fevered speculation is aroused by the byline on the Guardian's story. It reads "staff reporter" presumably because the identity of the journalist who wrote the story might give away the source.
It's always worth asking in whose interests this story was? The answer's clear, I think - Gordon Brown's. He wants to signal "a new politics" and what better way for this most tribal of Labour figures than to invite his political opponents into the Brown-ite version of the Big Tent.
