WI: Clegg chooses Labour

Given the events of last night I can't help but ask, what happens after the 2010 election if Clegg tries to form a government with Labour instead of with the Tories?

We can limit this to the 2010-2015 term to avoid a current politics discussion, which wouldn't belong here.
 
My first thought was that I thought it highly likely that Norman Clegg would have entered politics. But then his Northern charm, self-effacing personality, philosophical asides cynicism and commercial experience might have stood him in good stead in appealing to the voters. Yorkshire was a traditional Labour stronghold so I can see him, ably assisted by his friends William and Walter, succeeding and achieving a cabinet post.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
Given the events of last night I can't help but ask, what happens after the 2010 election if Clegg tries to form a government with Labour instead of with the Tories?

We can limit this to the 2010-2015 term to avoid a current politics discussion, which wouldn't belong here.
Assuming it's still with the OTL results of 2010, then the Government is going to collapse within a year because they won't have a majority. If they do the 'Progressive Alliance' Brown wanted, then it'll still fall because of how volatile it will be.

Cameron will be PM by 2012, basically, and he'll romp it in the snap election after the Labour-Liberal Democrats Coalition collapses.

However both Parties will be burned by tuition fees, but the LibDem collapse wouldn't be as bad as 2015.
 
Labour and the Lib Dems combined would fall short of a majority. Labour disliked SNP very much but even if you could somehow cobble together a coalition of Labour, Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, and Greens, it would just be too unstable, too subject to the whims of the smaller parties involved in it, too vulnerable to by-election defeats, etc. to last very long. It's hard enough to keep a coalition of two parties together, let alone four or five or six.
 
Maybe Labour doesn't lose as many seats, remaining the largest party, but short of overall majority.

At the very least, make it so that Labour is much closer to the Tories, seat-wise.
 
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