English Cypriot Lord Adonis, the former Labour transport secretary and one of the party’s leading pluralists, says he has changed his mind about the desirability of forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

In an interview with the Guardian, he said he had become “a lot more negative” about the attractions of coalition government having witnessed the outcome of the pact between David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

Adonis was part of Labour’s 2010 team negotiating with the Lib Dems before Clegg decided to form a government with the Tories. The peer was seen as one of the strongest pro-coalition voices in the Labour party. But now his view has changed, Adonis said, and he “definitely” thought it would be better for Labour to try to govern on its own even if it only had a slender majority.

His comments suggest that enthusiasm for coalition politics within the party is now extremely limited.

Scorn, and even hatred, for the Lib Dems is commonplace within Labour, but his comments are noteworthy because he used to be one of the figures at the top of the party most well-disposed towards Clegg’s party. A pluralist and an enthusiast for constitutional reform, Adonis started his political career in the Lib Dems and, as a post-election negotiator, he was originally in favour of a partnership.

Now he thinks very differently. “My view on coalitions has become a lot more negative,” he said.

“I would certainly prefer a Labour government with a small majority to a coalition with the Lib Dems. Definitely. Absolutely definitely. I would not have said that two and a half years ago.”

Adonis said he felt that “very little positive” had occurred since 2010 as a result of the Conservatives being in coalition with the Liberal Democrats and that the “weakness and lack of strategic effectiveness” of the junior partner was to blame.

“What we have essentially had, let’s be clear, is the Tories’ economic policy and a seriously failed attempt by the Lib Dems to inject some constitutional reform into a Tory government,” he said. “There has been very little that is identifiably Liberal that has been brought into the mix.

“If they were going to be in coalition with us, I hope it would be our programme that would be dominant. But it’s not at all clear to me what the Lib Dems would bring to the party.

“I think the real danger, which we’ve seen over the last two and a half years, is that you would have constant wrangling and argument about the implementation of the government’s programme, issue by issue, without any productive result from it.”

Adonis also had a warning for any of his colleagues tempted by the prospect of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

“Let’s be clear: it’s the same Lib Dem party that has failed catastrophically in forging an effective coalition with the Conservatives who we would be relying upon to form a coalition with us,” he said.

Ed Miliband has made it clear that it would be virtually impossible for a deal of that kind to be struck while Clegg remained party leader. Adonis’s comments make a future coalition even less likely.

But Tim Farron, the Lib Dem president, who is on the left of his party, said he did not accept that Adonis’s views were representative of wider Labour party thinking. “While Andrew may be getting jaded, there are plenty of young people in the Labour party who take the view that he took two and a half years ago,” he said, pointing out that a new group, Labour for Democracy, was recently set up to develop links between Labour and other parties.

“All of us want our parties to win a majority – I want a majority Lib Dem government – but majority governments are much easier and more comfortable for politicians, and much worse for the public,” he said.

Farron said the best example of this in modern times – “and the reason why Andrew [Adonis] needs to be reminded that he was right in the first place” – was New Labour in 1997. If Tony Blair had been in coalition with the Lib Dems, Farron said, he would have pursued much more progressive policies, including “a more intelligent and mature relationship with Europe”, stronger green policies and electoral reform.

The Guardian

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