YESTERDAY afternoon, when asked if Labour has plans to form a coalition to topple the government following the Queen’s speech today, Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell replied: ‘No, no we are not into any discussions or anything like that about alliances or coalitions or whatever…
‘We will put forward what we think will be in the best interest of the country, and we hope that Conservative MPs and other MPs vote for it because Phillip Hammond this morning does not seem to have got the message. Maybe parliament has to impose this message on the government:
‘We have got to end austerity, we cannot go on with the this scale of cuts in our public services and we cannot go on with this continuous pay freeze. People have had enough.’
He was then asked: ‘Given that do you think that there is any prospect that you can defeat the government on this Queen’s speech?’
McDonnell answered: ‘You can never tell what will happen in Parliament, but, even if we do not defeat them on the Queen’s speech, when it comes down to individual austerity measures I cannot see this government having a majority. Increasingly now, we are seeing the Conservative Party fall apart and I think that we will see this government fall apart.’
Meanwhile, Tory cabinet minister Chris Grayling said yesterday that they were about to strike a ‘sensible’ deal with the Democratic Unionists (DUP). Discussions designed to guarantee DUP support for Theresa May’s government have been going on for the last ten days. This has become an increasingly desperate attempt to give May and the Tory Party a majority, which they can only get with DUP support.
