Express & Star

Coalition talk is unavoidable

Neither Labour or the Tories want to approach the next election thinking about a coalition.

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The problem is, with the opinion polls still so close after the party conference season, they don't really have a choice but to think of it.

For all their attempts to portray Ed Miliband as another Michael Foot, his conference speech was not the second longest suicide note in history.

He forgot to mention the economy and immigration, and that's very bad. Even so, what the Tories gained was a lead of only a measly couple of points, despite their own policies and announcements being well generally well received. He might not recover from it. But there's still time to turn it around.

David Winnick has been an MP for a very long time. And now the member for Walsall North wants his party colleagues to put out of their minds any prospect of having to cosy up to anyone else.

"We have to work all out for a working majority and any question of coalition with the Liberal Democrats or anyone else does not arise now." he says. "It's completely wrong to consider it when we have such a goal.

"What the electorate wants on May 7 next year we will see then."

Much as he may be pushing for a majority, the question has arisen now. Indeed it arose four years ago.

Some people who voted Liberal Democrat might have done so believing there was a chance they would form a coalition with one of the others. Many didn't.

Now, the party's dwindling number of supporters are left in no doubt that Nick Clegg is trying to stay in government with one or other of the two bigger parties.

And just as many Lib Dems didn't vote for the Tories, neither did Conservative voters put their X in the box expecting to have a party they didn't back taking some of the key roles in the cabinet.

The next election will see the parties have to campaign against each other but not do so with such bad blood left between them that they burn their bridges, in case days of horse trading begin on May 8.

So it is an important and perfectly reasonable set of questions for voters to be asking of their MPs and candidates: Who could you work with? And what would you give up in exchange for their support?

War weariness is holding us back from boots on the ground

Have party leaders on both sides of the Atlantic painted themselves into a corner when it comes to tackling Islamic State?

Wolverhampton South East MP Pat McFadden questions what may happen by ruling out 'boots on the ground' the way they have done.

He wrote: "Is war weariness pushing the West back into an unwitting adoption of the Vietnam doctrine of escalation by degree rather than using overwhelming force which replaced it?

"For our leaders haunted by the recent experience of Iraq and Afghanistan it is worth remembering, the past did not begin in 2003."

The difficulty is it's not that long since British forces left Iraq. And they're only now leaving Afghanistan after 13 troubled years.

It doesn't make it right to hold off on saving people from modern-day barbarians. But it does make it all the more difficult to take the country with you.

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