Clegg rules out propping up 3rd place Brown

Nick Clegg has finally answered one question (in The Sunday Times ahead of his Marr BBC interview where he repeated it) that has been hovering over British politics for 10 days – if Gordon Brown came third in share of the vote he would NOT prop him up.

Here’s what he said on the BBC:

“It is just preposterous the idea that if a party comes third in the number of votes, it still has somehow the right to carry on squatting in No 10.

“I think a party which has come third – and so millions of people have decided to abandon them – has lost the election spectacularly (and) cannot then lay claim to providing the prime minister of this country.”

He was asked whether this would change if Labour changed its leader but he ducked that one saying the main two political parties could be carrying out all sorts of revenge attacks on their leaders in the aftermath of this election. I spoke to a Lib Dem MP close to the leadership last week who said, admittedly when the Lib Dems were riding a bit higher in the polls, that Nick Clegg would have a better claim to the top job of PM if he entered into a deal with Labour in third place in the share of the vote and him in second. Look at the quote and you might think that is exactly what Nick Clegg is himself thinking.

As I mentioned on Friday, there are senior Cabinet ministers who are letting it be known they think that Lord Mandelson’s campaign isn’t focused enough on social justice and, more relevant to the issue in hand, they hear reports that he and his allies have been talking about how to ditch Mr Brown after the election, make overtures to the Lib Dems and rebuild the party under David Miliband.

On the numbers, the most intriguing analysis in the papers this morning was by Peter Kellner in The Sunday Times. He’s been crunching numbers in the Lab/Con marginals which Tories are hoping will come right for them and his analysis is that the Lib Dem surge at the moment is hurting the Tories worse than some senior Tories are speculating there… he expects it to recede a bit and sticks his neck out with this prediction: Con (36 per cent) 290 seats; Lab (29 per cent) 250 seats; LibDem (26 per cent) 90 seats.

Peter Mandelson’s team think Labour needs to get a bit higher than that, the way things are aligned at the moment, up to 31 or 32 pe cent to be sure of denying the Tories top in the MPs’ tally. This week, which they hope, helped by the focus of the third and final debate, will be “economy week,” must turn that round.

Not unconnected with that perhaps there’s a message winging its way to the broadcasters from Labour HQ, ticking us off for getting too caught up in the polls and not discussing policy as much as usual. It reads a lot like it might have been initiated by Alastair Campbell, who’s been saying this sort of thing on his blog.

This has been a very different election – the debates, the convulsion of the polls has taken centre stage. The daily London press conferences by the parties were jettisoned for something more sporadic. Anyway, you can judge for yourself whether you agree as the letter is here (Labour say they asked the Lib Dems and the Tories to co-sign but they declined).