Maybe The Horse Will Learn To Sing

AndyC

Donor
It had been a few short weeks since the 2010 General Election and the Labour unity and common purpose had lasted for – oh – several days, at least. Ed Milliband ran his hand through his hair and sighed. He caught his brother’s gaze. David was rolling his eyes. Most of the rest of the Cabinet were looking bored, embarrassed or simply zoned out. The argument between Ed Balls and Gordon Brown had stretched into a second hour with no sign of any relenting.

Gus O’Donnell finally broke into the back-and-forth during an uncharacteristic hesitation by Gordon.
“Gentlemen – do we not think that the subject matter deserves fuller and more detailed consideration?”

What the HELL was he doing? Surely the Cabinet Secretary was supposed to defuse the argument and get them back on track! David looked as nonplussed as Ed felt.

There was a brief pause, before both Balls and Brown tried to speak at once. A glare from Brown quelled Balls, who subsided reluctantly.
“Gus – what the fuck did you THINK we were doing? Talking about the weather?”

O’Donnell raised an eyebrow urbanely. Almost uniquely, he had the ability to quell one of Brown’s snarls before it got real traction. Brown paused.
“Sorry, Gus. Didn’t mean to snap at you. Your point was …?”

“It was, Prime Minister, that you and the Chancellor obviously have a lot of information to weigh up and analyse as you find the best balance to your views. Do you not think that the situation would benefit from the two of you, with your respective staffs, of course, adjourning after Cabinet to a location where you could call up the references you both desire and repeatedly keep citing, in a position from which you could endeavour to chart a satisfactory route between the perils which both of you respectively see as greatest, and come to safe harbour in a mutually satisfactory haven where both priorities are satisfied to the best possible common level?”

There was another brief pause, this time broken by Balls.
“You mean: shut up and discuss this afterwards?”

“Chancellor, I simply mean that it would be far easier and more convenient for yourselves, and the rest of Cabinet could get on with their respective contributions to our agenda”, said O’Donnell.

Balls looked rebellious, but Brown stepped in. “Yeah, you’re right, Gus. We’ve bored the crap out of everyone else here”.

“But the rest of Cabinet are intimately involved with the outcome! If we do shift money into capital spending, we’ve got to cut current spending to have any credibility. If we don’t, then the recovery will be slow …”

Brown cut him off “… and the entire point of us being in power right now is to prevent the sodding Tories from slashing current spending! So we have to follow through on the Budget proposals – proposals which Alistair quite properly discussed with me in depth – to defer capital spending!”

Ed sighed. They were off again. So near, but yet so far.
A sudden movement caught his eye – his brother had pulled out his mobile phone and was looking at it in surprise. Gradually, a smile crossed David’s face and he piped up: “Um, guys? You’ve got to hear this!”

“… but the fiscal multiplier is most pronounced …” Balls was cut off. Brown had raised his hand for silence, looking irked. “What now, David?”, asked Brown.

“It’s about David Laws”, replied David.

“What about bloody Laws?”

“He’s been seriously screwed. Looks like he was being outright illegal with his expenses. He’s about to make a public statement”, said David.

“What? Why?”, asked Brown.

“The Daily Telegraph has some kind of splash on him. Hang on …” David scrolled to the next message. “Right. He was paying his lover rent to buy houses from his Parliamentary expenses”

“But Laws is gay!” protested Burnham. “Isn’t he? I thought there was a really strong rumour, and I was told ...”

“Yup”, said David with a smile. “Mandy’s got all the juicy gossip on this. So he was trying to keep things quiet from the press and now he’s totally screwed. Might even have to take the Hundreds”

“Oh, what a shame!” said Balls, insincerely.

“Terrible”, agreed Brown, with a smirk. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer man”.

Ed Milliband later noted in his diary:
After that, of course, not much of note got covered. Schadenfreude was the theme of the day. David Laws epitomised the wing of the Liberal Democrats that seemed closest to the Tories, and nearly everyone was grateful for the excuse it provided for us to dodge our own worries. One thing that stood out to me, though: why did Mandelson text David and not Gordon or Ed Balls?
 
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Truly this government will be a pleasant and successful one that definitely won't be facing collapse.

Great to see this TL up at last, if Labour look too insincere or if Laws can make it look like he's being forced out then we could have our first crisis in government. One thing we never saw was how the public are reacting to this, I imagine that this government is about to break into Spencer Perceval levels of unpopularity soon.
 

Thande

Donor
Glad to see this begin! Or rather return.

Mandelson, as always, knows which way the wind is blowing.

I wonder what Deputy PM Chris Huhne is like; of course we know now that like Laws he has a ticking time bomb of a past scandal over his head. I wonder if Huhne will become as vilified as Clegg in OTL. Speaking of Clegg, is he in the government? I don't recall you mentioning in "The Fourth Lectern" whether Clegg had a role in the Lib Dem frontbench after losing the 2007 leadership election, though it seems likely.
 

AndyC

Donor
Glad to see this begin! Or rather return.

Mandelson, as always, knows which way the wind is blowing.

I wonder what Deputy PM Chris Huhne is like; of course we know now that like Laws he has a ticking time bomb of a past scandal over his head. I wonder if Huhne will become as vilified as Clegg in OTL. Speaking of Clegg, is he in the government? I don't recall you mentioning in "The Fourth Lectern" whether Clegg had a role in the Lib Dem frontbench after losing the 2007 leadership election, though it seems likely.

Oh, the Lib Dems didn't take a Coalition role in the Fourth Lectern - Brown had just enough to make a go of it as a minority government so the negotiations occurred with Labour having a sufficiently strong negotiating position that no deal was possible in the end. So Chris Huhne is not DPM. This may prove to be an advantage for the Lib Dems ...

Clegg does have a shadow front bench role (Home Affairs, IIRC) for the Lib Dems
 

AndyC

Donor
As it's been so long since the Fourth Lectern, I'd probably better set the scene better.

Result of May 2010 General Election:

Labour: 315
Conservative: 249 (250 according to the media, but that includes the Speaker)
Lib Dem: 52
UKIP: 3
Greens: 1
SNP: 6
Plaid Cymru: 3
IKHH: 1
DUP: 8
Sinn Fein: 5
SDLP: 3
Alliance: 1
Independent (Hermon): 1


Conservatives: 8,339,716 votes.
UK vote share: 28.1%. GB vote share: 28.8%

Labour: 8,135,755 votes.
UK vote share: 27.4%. GB vote share: 28.1%

Lib Dems: 5,736,704 votes.
UK vote share: 19.4%. GB vote share: 19.8%

UKIP: 4,949,614 votes.
UK vote share: 16.7%. GB vote share: 17.1%

Party Leaders:
Labour: Brown
Conservatives: Cameron
Liberal Democrats: Huhne
UKIP: Congdon

Government result: Despite an offer of Coalition regardless of whether or not Labour achieved a majority, the Liberal Democrats were unimpressed with the offer made in practice after the election and simply agreed to a six-month supply and confidence deal (with abstention on confidence and supply matters, as long as Labour did not abuse the "confidence" tag)
 

AndyC

Donor
And Basileus Giorgios's excellent constituency map following the Fourth Lectern's May 2010 General Election:

11AM.png
 
Well, this could be very interesting.

My understanding is that Huhne would have offered Foreign to Cleggers.
 

AndyC

Donor
Well, this could be very interesting.

My understanding is that Huhne would have offered Foreign to Cleggers.

Well, as I haven't gone canonical on that (I never mentioned the specific portfolios of the Lib Dems other than "Leader" for Huhne and "Treasury" for Cable), I can simply run with that.

Actually, it does fit better - in the negotiations, they offered Clegg the post of Minister for Europe, after all.
 
It's back. Excellent. Even though slowly watching my party implode and give the Tories at least a decade of government kills me a little inside. But only a little.
 
Excellent to see this back.

Balls as Chancellor is hardly a surprise, but it seems as though Brown is instantly regretting it. I do hope, for his sake, that he kept Darling in the Cabinet, although I doubt that the latter would have appreciated it.

Aside that, it doesn't seem as though the top places have been moved around too much, although I wonder if Brown has been tempted to bring any of the newbies into Junior positions, given that the Expenses Cull has been just as serious as OTL.
 

AndyC

Donor
Excellent to see this back.

Balls as Chancellor is hardly a surprise, but it seems as though Brown is instantly regretting it. I do hope, for his sake, that he kept Darling in the Cabinet, although I doubt that the latter would have appreciated it.

Aside that, it doesn't seem as though the top places have been moved around too much, although I wonder if Brown has been tempted to bring any of the newbies into Junior positions, given that the Expenses Cull has been just as serious as OTL.

The reshuffle was minor and I'll cover details as they come up in narrative. However, for most of the top jobs, Brown's hands were pretty much tied - Foreign Secretary and Chancellor were no-brainers, for example.
 
The most anticipated sequel of 2013! Great so far, I love the genuinely unpredictable nature of this, and the slow-motion car accident that was four-horse-race-FPTP in Fourth Lectern was one of the best things we've seen in a 2010 election TL.
 

Thande

Donor
Oh, the Lib Dems didn't take a Coalition role in the Fourth Lectern - Brown had just enough to make a go of it as a minority government so the negotiations occurred with Labour having a sufficiently strong negotiating position that no deal was possible in the end. So Chris Huhne is not DPM. This may prove to be an advantage for the Lib Dems ...

Clegg does have a shadow front bench role (Home Affairs, IIRC) for the Lib Dems

Ah, I must be misremembering the end.

The Lib Dems' performance is rather interesting--the dynamics must be rather complex with UKIP (like they are now) stealing some of the 'a plague on both your houses vote' as well as the 'disaffected eurosceptic vote' from the Tories. All the same, it's interesting the Lib Dems didn't do better considering their performance tends to be on something of a pendulum with the Tories, you can imagine rural constituencies where UKIP spoils the Tory vote, Labour are a non-entity and the Lib Dems power through.


And Basileus Giorgios's excellent constituency map following the Fourth Lectern's May 2010 General Election:
Not to blow my own trumpet, but I made the original basemap that BG edited...the only reason I bring this up is that I'm confused why he swapped the colours I assigned to UKIP and the EngDems respectively, the purple stands out better and is their own self-identified colour.
 

AndyC

Donor
Just for information: My plan is to update this weekly on Wednesdays. I've already got enough material to take me through nearly to the end of February.

(I'd have more if my writing on this hadn't reminded me how much I enjoy writing and inspired me to return to my long-abandoned sci-fi novel - I stalled 48,000 words in to it in 1999. Since restarting in late December, I've passed the point that blocked me and taken that to 72,000 words and am in sight of the end (about 20,000 words to go, with the long-prepared denouement taking up about half of that :)))
 
Not to blow my own trumpet, but I made the original basemap that BG edited...the only reason I bring this up is that I'm confused why he swapped the colours I assigned to UKIP and the EngDems respectively, the purple stands out better and is their own self-identified colour.

I can't remember exactly why, but I think it was because when I made that map on my laptop, the UKIP purple stood out as a sort of vivid violet, which wasn't particularly pleasant on the eye and didn't look at all like UKIP's deep purple. On the Lancashire desktop, where I am now, I agree that purple looks better.
 
I really enjoyed reading the Fourth Lectern so I'm really excited you've brought it back Andy.

Can't get enough of the writing style mixed with the political thrills. :p
 
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