Brown in one last desperate throw of dice May 9, 2010 GORDON Brown was last night desperately clinging to hopes of forming a grand anti-Tory coalition, with the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish and Welsh nationalists and other left-leaning MPs. He held a secret meeting with Nick Clegg yesterday afternoon to try and sell the idea, offering significant concessions on voting reform in a bid to woo the [...]
Shirley Williams hits out at Lib-Con deal May 9, 2010 THE first signs of in-fighting within the Lib Dems emerged yesterday when Lady Shirley Williams warned against a coalition government. She told The Guardian she would rather work with a minority Tory government on key issues than strike a formal partnership. She said the gentleman’s agreement-type deal should hinge on the Tories agreeing to overhaul [...]
Q&A: VOTING SYSTEMS May 9, 2010 Q. HOW DOES THE FIRST-PAST-THE-POST SYSTEM WORK? A. The candidate who gets the most votes in their constituency is elected as MP. If one party has an overall majority of MPs – more than the others put together – it forms the government. Q. WHY DO THE LIB DEMS WANT TO SCRAP FPTP? A. They [...]
Cameron calls a meeting to quell dissent May 9, 2010 David Cameron must win round MPs in the commons tonight DAVID CAMERON will address Conservative MPs at a hastily-arranged parliamentary party meeting in the commons tonight. If he had won an outright majority, it would have been a tub-thumping affair; around 100 new MPs would have been given a lesson in desk banging, as their [...]
City P.M. brought you the final result May 9, 2010 City A.M. became City P.M. on Friday, bringing readers a special one-off evening edition to carry the final result of the general election. The evening newspaper followed two morning editions. An early edition carried reports from the first election counts, revealing the Tories were on course to become the largest party in a hung parliament. A [...]
Civil service takes centre stage as parties start making deals May 9, 2010 THE head of the civil service Gus O’Donnell – known as God in Whitehall – yesterday took centre stage as he coordinated horse-trading between party leaders. O’Donnell has been preparing for a hung parliament since February, when pollsters first suggested that neither Labour nor the Tories would win an outright majority. One of his main [...]
Scots scupper Tories May 9, 2010 IT is quite clear that Labour has lost its mandate to govern this country.” So said David Cameron in the early hours of Friday morning. If he was talking about England, he was entirely right. The Tories will have 298 out of 533 English seats (a true blue constituency has yet to declare). That gives them [...]
Greece deal strips Merkel of majority May 9, 2010 GERMAN chancellor Angela Merkel was last night stripped of her house majority after dropping ten points in the north Rhine-Westphalia state election. The regional election became crucial to Germany’s balance of power after it agreed to a hugely unpopular bailout of Greece. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats won 34.5 per cent of the vote and their [...]
Government reforms should not damage City May 9, 2010 THIS election campaign was one of the most keenly contested and significant – both for the City and the UK – in recent generations. At the time of writing the composition of the next government is uncertain, but the issues affecting the economy and financial services industry remain far more clear cut. I hope the [...]
Pru pushes on with cash call after FSA deal May 9, 2010 PRUDENTIAL was last night on the verge of thrashing out an emergency compromise with the City regulator, clearing the way for the release of its rights issue prospectus this week. The British insurer is locked in talks with the Financial Services Authority over its capital structure after the planned $35.5bn (£24bn) acquisition of AIA in [...]
