Oh dear.Deborah Summers writes on the Guardian politics blog:
Is Nick really prepared, within his first 100 days as leader, to lose one of his most respected front-bench spokemen? Surely he cannot be that silly?"There is no question of a free vote on this matter; there will definitely be a party whip and as a member of the frontbench David will be bound by the same collective responsibility as everyone else," a source close to Clegg says.
"If he feels he can't toe the party line then he will have no choice but to stand down."
I think Nick would do well to keep this particular souce a little further from him in future.
Thanks to Peter Welch. Our title is taken from Nigel Molesworth's "Know the Enemy or Masters at a Glance" in Down with Skool! See this video.
It's a Cath 22 situation for Nick Clegg. He'll be damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. I have made no bones about the fact that I strongly believe David Heath should step down if he feels unable to toe the line. Perhaps its my army days coming back to haunt me but you can only have one leader and you certainly can't have your troops doing whatever they want whenever they want. Its time the Lib Dems had some discipline 'knocked into them' instead of thinking life was just one big love in.
ReplyDeleteNick Clegg could of course tell that he knew that David Heath was going to vote like this when he nominated him, and thus there's no need to sack him.
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