Illtyd Harrington - 'As I Please ' - The Lib-Con Coalition - No 10’s new radiant couple greet the day

Published: 20 May 2010
by ILLTYD HARRINGTON

THE garden of Number 10 Downing Street has never struck me as a place where the love that dare not speak its name might blossom.

This Con Lib Dem civil contract was administered in an almost homoerotic atmosphere. The radiant couple, who seemed aroused by pre-marital tension, greeted the day. 

Nick had barely reached the door of Number 10 before Dave swept out from behind it. Contact of such intimacy has never been seen at that door before. 

It called to mind the populist governor of Louisiana, Huey Long, in 1935 when he said “Now is the time for all good men to rise above principle.” 

This was the triumph of cynicism hiding behind a mask of necessity. 

As news spread, the timid Labour Lord David Lipsey was so overcome he pleaded for a Grand Coalition of all three main parties.  

He must gather comfort that Frank Field, a Labour MP who manages to take tea with Margaret Thatcher, is to be Dave’s adviser on benefits. Huzzah! Another Czar – who reacts like a Siberian wind.

Dave meanwhile lives in a world designed by Mary Poppins. Nursery values. Pottie training. And so self-righteous, he could end up as the chief boy scout.

The hard-hearted hacks are still in a state of numb disbelief. This couldn’t be the Dave who hung around with Chancellor Norman Lamont when George Soros single-handedly depleted our currency and caused bank interest to rise twice in day. 

Vince Cable, that genial bank manager lookalike, is an accomplished ballroom dancer. He easily performed a military two-step to a mixed reception, even in the Tory papers, who a couple of weeks ago rubbished him as a financial charlatan. 

Born to play Baron Hard Up,  in the Whitehall pantomime Cinderella, Cable was overlooked as David Laws – a bloodless Liberal – got the part of the Demon King. 

But I was shocked after witnessing such convivial bliss   in Downing Street to learn of an alternative ceremony. 

The Blair faction came out from the hiding place beneath Parliament. 

None of the rapture of being at the Con Lib wedding breakfast here – perhaps their prophet-in-exile would sponsor another reception in the garden of his Buckinghamshire mansion to endorse a former special adviser, David Miliband. Mrs Blair could be asked to do the catering. 

The Miliband brothers might start their campaigns for the Labour leadership by laying a wreath in a garden of remembrance, for those who have died in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. 

New Labour is looking prematurely aged and continuously recycling all 

public denials of being associated with it will be difficult to sustain. 

• Illtyd Harrington is a former deputy leader of the GLC