Disagreement over whether Treasury broke coalition rules

I blogged on Monday about how the Bank of England and the Treasury fed “advice” into the Con-Lib coalition negotiations saying that £6bn cuts this year were a good idea that would not lead to another recession (you can see David Laws’ original words here).

I hear that in the negotiations, Mr Laws was so impressed by these representations, that when it came to talking to Labour’s coalition negotiating team in parallel negotiations Mr Laws asked for billions of pounds of in-year cuts as one of the Lib Dem demands. Given that the Lib Dems had campaigned only a few days earlier against in-year cuts that quite took Labour by surprise!

Someone who helped with the orignal Cabinet Office guidance to civil servants on how to handle the coalition negotiations says the Treasury “advice” on pros and cons of £6bn cuts was within the spirit and letter of the rules. Some senior figures in the Labour team at the time strongly disagree.

More generally, you do wonder where the manifesto-blending of the coalition leaves mandates and manifestos in the brave new politics.

Will the public look more sceptically than ever at manifesto commitments? Will the personalities of the leadership candidates be even more centre stage in future? Will we all be voting on the basis of imagined concessions and deals as much as explicit individual party commitments?