By IANS,
London : Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats leader who holds the key to government formation in Britain, was told about Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s offer to step down only 10 minutes before the announcement.
The Guardian learnt that Clegg was not formally told what Brown was set to announce until 4.50 p.m.
The Labour want to strike a deal with the Liberal Democrats. Brown was, however, told by intermediaries that his quitting would be desirable for the deal to go ahead.
Clegg met Brown thrice but he didn’t ask Brown to step down. “He knew that would be quite improper and invidious,” a source said.
Brown’s aides had felt frustrated that Clegg had said he would talk first to Conservatives, which secured the most seats and vote share in the May 6 election that threw up Britain’s first hung parliament since 1974.
“We knew why he said it but it meant he had to go through the process of talking in public to the Conservatives,” one cabinet member was quoted as saying.
The Conservatives finished 20 seats short of an outright majority of 326 required to govern alone. The Liberals lost five seats, down to 57. Labour won 258 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons.
The political tide turned after it emerged that a small group of Labour negotiators had met a Liberal Democrat team in secret Saturday. The Labour negotiators understood that the Liberal Democrat team did not want, in their hearts, to do a deal with the Tories.
“Their issue was less about the manifesto or policy differences with the Tories as they informed us. They told us the Conservatives were ‘so desperate for power they were willing to offer us anything – it was almost embarrassing’.
“The difficulty was that they knew that if they formed a coalition with the Tories, the Liberal Democrats might well split at grassroots level. The only way that could be prevented was if (Conservative leader David) Cameron gave something rock-solid on voting reform,” a Labour source told the Guardian.