Clegg's Lords proposals are made of fail

[Leftbehind]

As with the AV referendum, which was defeated by Labour, it's up to Ed Miliband to do the right thing.

Do you regard Ed Miliband as having done the right thing last time, after all he personally supported it, but could do little to stop most Labour voters using it as a opportunity to kick the Lib Dems given it was an essentially meaningless and self-serving system you'd bargained for?

Of course he has much more control for this, so it'll be interesting to see Labour's response. I'm of the opinion anything's better than the current arrangement, and would prefer a proportionally elected setup although I have some misgivings about the proposals.

[Leftbehind]

God, the Liberals are ing useless (as if it was in doubt).

[Leftbehind]

It seems a bit petty, but I think Clegg would have looked even worse if he'd continued waving through every Tory idea, and this was probably easier than anything else to link to Lords reform.

Anyway, the initial map drawn by the English Commission was so awful that I can't see the boundary review as any great loss.  And a small point: Clegg's constituency was made noticeably less safe by the provisional map.

Yeah, completely agree. The phrase humiliation was popping up a lot when news of this first leaked, and quite rightly: he couldn't support the Tories' side of the bargain whilst watching his own withdrawn without losing yet more face, not after the AV loss (the HOL reform had a whiff of attempting to assuage the Lib Dem loss there).

Delighted we escape those awful proposals.

[Leftbehind]

The Tories need a 10.5% lead for an outright majority, on current boundaries. On average, they're 10% behind in polls. I can't really see how he'd get them passed without sizeable Liberal support, and yet I can see the desperation that'd lead them to press on regardless.

Are the Liberals supposed to be centrist or centre-left?

Depends who you ask. Historically centrist, for me  - and centre-right these days.

[Leftbehind]

Correction: Cameron is going to attempt to push through boundary changes with or without the Liberals, and fail if it's the latter, because the Conservatives are a minority.

[Leftbehind]

Exactly, an election right now wouldn't suit either party.