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Welsh Assembly election

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The Full Monty

  • Betsan Powys
  • 10 May 07, 04:03 PM

I'm sure there must be plenty of good reasons for reading Paddy Ashdown's diaries but this one had probably not struck you.

When he and Tony Blair were discussing the possibility of a coalition with Labour - we're talking the Autumn of 1997 in this instance - you might remember the suggestion that as part of the 'Full Monty' as they called it, the Libs would have been offered two cabinet seats.

But would the leader have been a shoo-in? No. The idea floated was that Menzies Campbell and Alan Beith took the two seats available, leaving Paddy Ashdown as leader from outside the cabinet.

Will anyone have a copy with them in the car as they travel to Llandrindod for the Lib Dem Exec meeting tonight?

I've heard the suggestion made, by pundits not party people, that - if ever a deal was struck - putting Jenny Randerson and Kirsty Williams in the cabinet would make a bitter pill easier for some to swallow. And no harm either, perhaps, in enhancing the two figures most likely to go for the leadership when it next comes up for grabs?

Comments   Post your comment

  • 1.
  • At 08:56 PM on 14 May 2007,
  • Bedd Gelert wrote:

Hmm..interesting idea, Betsan.

Let's hope there is more mileage in it than what, sadly, became of Lib Dem aspirations of power after the Tony 'landslide'. Paddy was left at the altar so to speak.

But I do wonder why the Lib Dems seem to be so coy about a coalition when surely they have to accept as a third/fourth party that that is their role in life ?

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