BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown will stay in office until September and then resign if a coalition deal can be agreed with the Liberal Democrats, he announced yesterday.
During an extraordinary day, Mr Brown announced at 5pm that he would step down, but said he believed that he should first “discharge” the duty of forming “a stable and principled government”.
Mr Brown’s decision to announcement his departure from No 10 Downing Street is not a surprise, but his announcement that formal coalition talks were to open with the Liberal Democrats threw Westminster into frenzy.
His place in office was a major impediment to the hopes of negotiating a Labour-Liberal Democrat pact, but the Liberal Democrats, if they do a deal, will not know who is to be the next Labour leader before they sign a coalition deal.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrats negotiations, which have been going on since the weekend, ran into difficulties after the Liberal Democrat team returned to the House of Commons to brief colleagues. There, difficulties about the concessions on offer from the Conservatives on electoral reform, taxation and other issues were focused on by MPs, many of whom are very wary about allying themselves with the Conservatives.
The negotiators were sent back for clarifications, but before any outcome could emerge from that, Mr Clegg offered Mr Brown the opportunity to open full coalition talks, which was seized within minutes. Shortly after 6pm, the Liberal Democrat leader expressed some disappointment with the progress of the talks with the Conservatives: “Over the past four days we have been working flat out to deliver an agreement that can provide stable government that can last.
“The talks with the Conservatives have been very constructive and I am grateful to David Cameron and his team for the effort they have put in. But so far we have been unable to agree a comprehensive partnership agreement for a full parliament,” he said.
By 7pm, the Conservatives had increased their offer to the Liberal Democrats on electoral reform, expressing a willingness to hold a referendum on the introduction of the Alternative Vote system.
However, Labour, which had offered such a referendum in its election manifesto, immediately topped that offer by telling the Liberal Democrats that they would introduce AV without a referendum.
The Alternative Vote system is not a proportional system, as the Liberal Democrats have long wanted, but it would increase their chances of winning seats outside of their heartland areas.
Senior Labour figures, such as Welsh secretary Peter Hain now argue that an AV referendum is not necessary since it would only modify existing electoral rules, not completely replace them.
Describing it as a final offer, Conservative MP William Hague said: “The choice now before the Liberal Democrats is whether to go in with the Labour Party in a government that would not be stable or secure because it would rely on minor parties for any majority at all; that would have a second unelected prime minister in a row, something we believe would be unacceptable to the people of this country; and that would impose voting reform on the country without any consultation, something that would be profoundly undemocratic.”