Coalition truths

Published on 27/09/2012 00:00

You ask (Perpsective, 25 September) why the Liberal Democrats “did not try to make a more serious attempt to come to an agreement with Labour after the last election”.

The short answer is that they did, with very senior party members making great efforts to achieve it. However, even while Gordon Brown was trying to put together a “rainbow coalition” – including the Liberal Democrats, the two Nationalist parties and the Northern Ireland representatives, which would indeed have been a dog with many tails to wag – Labour front-benchers were announcing that they were not interested and would now go into opposition.

It was therefore Labour who walked away, leaving a Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition as the only way of ensuring a stable government for the UK, given the election results. That answers your other question, ie why did the Lib Dems go into coalition with the Tories in the first place, to which one could add, the democratic choice of the people made that coalition inevitable.

Jane Ann Liston

Largo Road

St Andrews, Fife