That didn’t happen.
You’re citing a blog, again.
Order Order isn’t a blog. And you’ll have noted it cites both a Labour MP and The Irish News. So please fight your own ignorance.
You really should read your own links. Your blog “cites” the Irish News. The Irish News “cites” a leaked email from “Sidney Blumenthal, an unofficial adviser to Ms Clinton”
The email makes the claim that Shaun Woodward “for his part, is working on an economic package for Northern Ireland to win support from the DUP and other parties for Labour”
https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/2839
Where does it say Brown tried “to form an alliance with the DUP”?
Ignorance fought.
It’s difficult to find a current citation that isn’t from a frothing right-wing source (and I include the Daily Mail in that, but even Breitbart has jumped into the fray), but Gordon Brown certainly reached out to the DUP in 2010, promising to maintain the block grant and claiming the Conservatives would cut it. The discussions didn’t get very far at all for a number of reasons, mostly because the LibDems agreed a deal with the Conservatives fairly quickly (more fools, they) but also due to objections from other NI parties.
Whether it would have gotten beyond what was basically political small talk is a moot point; personally I’m fairly sure Brown would have gotten into bed with the devil if it kept the party in government but the two situations are not entirely comparable in that the current talks are much more substantive and we never got to find out if the rest of the Labour party would have been okay with a Labour-DUP alliance. Brown would have likely faced a major internal revolt had he agreed to the sort of policies the DUP currently espouse.
Of course, it’s also entirely possible that Brown never intended a Labour-DUP alliance and was merely trying to stop the DUP from joining up with the Conservatives on the assumption that the LibDems wouldn’t do so. Had the LibDems not said yes, the Tories would have had to scrape together every bit of support they could elsewhere, so sowing dissent amongst the right-wing parties would have also served Brown’s agenda.
Speculation is fun.
Try reading the copy of the tweet from Caroline Lucas immediately below that. And the one from Ian Paisley (the younger one) about Labour in 2015.
Let me quote them for you:
Is Guido Fawkes actually seen as a reliable news source? I see him as the equivalent of the Sun.
You mean Caroline Flint. If you are going to quote tweets as proof of your claim that Gordon Brown tried “to form an alliance with the DUP” you should at least attribute them properly.
By the way, the Ian Paisley tweet actually quotes another tweet by Mark Wallace of ConservativeHome that links back to…you guessed it, the Irish News story that quotes the Blumenthal email.
Your evidence of is laughably thin.
I refer you to my Telegraph link above. Brown certainly approached the DUP in 2010. What his real agenda was is another matter.
I did. I cited it upthread.
At least you’re now admitting I’m correct.
That was pre-election though. Any coalition Labour could have put together post-election could probably have been made without the DUP, though it would have been sensible to at least keep them reasonably on side.
However, Quartz is trying to prove Labour hypocisy through comparing two dissimilar situations.
Just to clear this up,
You are wrong.
You asserted Labour tried to form an “alliance” with the DUP. Your cite of Tory gossip blog Order Order doesn’t make the claim you made.
You wrongly attributed Caroline Flint’s tweet to Caroline Lucas.
You cited Ian Paisley’s tweet as further proof of your claim. It also doesn’t back up your claim.
You ignored the fact that Ian Paisley’s tweet links back (eventually) to the same Irish News story that still doesn’t offer any evidence that Labour tried to “to form an alliance with the DUP”.
The reason for your being wrong in all these things can be adequately summed up by first post in reply to your claim.
That didn’t happen.
Whoops!
Mea culpa.
Actually it does, but don’t let that bother you.
Actually, he’s confirming it.
I’m sorry, but none of the parties are paragons of virtue. Likewise, none of them are evil incarnate.
If DUP eventually won’t join the Tories in the government, is a Grand Coalition of all the other parties at all plausible? Or does the failure of any leader to form a government automatically force a new election?
The Queen made an interesting choice of hat for today’s Speech:
The Government could still try to survive a confidence vote in the Commons. If they lose that, the parties have two weeks to create a new government with the confidence of the Commons. If that passes, Parliament is automatically dissolved.
No, that’s Nigel Dodds claiming the DUP had “correspondence and conversations” with Labour. There’s a world of difference between claiming something and confirming it. You must be able to grasp that, surely.
But anyway, why are you so hung about a deal that, even if it was discussed at any meaningful level, certainly didn’t happen? This idea being put about by the right wing media that there is some kind of equivalency between the Tory DUP pact and a purely hypothetical arrangement in 2010 or 2015, is thoroughly dishonest.
That sounds like just one more reason to expect this government to be shaky and short-lived. And for Brexit to ultimately happen essentially in name only, if at all.