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Music entrepreneurs don’t want Clegg-Brown combo
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 30 April 2010
A group of music business entrepreneurs, including the boss of digital music service provider Omnifone, Rob Lewis, and Robbie Williams’ inspirational manager Tim Clark, yesterday put their name to a letter in The Times warning about the dangers of a hung parliament which resulted in a coalition government between the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. A long list of entrepreneurs and businessmen from various sectors signed the letter.
As you’ve presumably noticed, the chances of a hung parliament where no one political party dominates the vote in the House Of Commons seems more likely at next week’s General Election than at any other big vote in decades, mainly due to so many people thinking Nick Clegg is a cool dude. Many political types think hung parliaments are a bad thing, though I personally reckon they’re wrong to do so, as I blogged here:
www.stuffbyme.co.uk/post/Might-a-hung-parliament-be-a-good-thing.aspx
Depending on how seats in the Commons were distributed in a hung parliament, it might be possible for the Labour Party to form a so called coalition government with the Lib Dems, forcing the Tories into opposition again, even if the Cam Man actually won the highest percentage of the overall popular vote. It was such a Lib-Lab pact that Lewis, Clark, Commercial Arts’ Guy Fletcher, VidZone’s Adrian Workman, 24-7 Entertainment’s Frank Taubert, Music Video Messages’ Stephen Kendall-Lane and Last Second Ticketing’s Craig Massey were all cautioning against in yesterday’s Times.
Summarising the letter, Omnifone boss Lewis said: “The public need to know that a Lib-Lab coalition would have dire consequences for entrepreneurship in the UK, leading to reduced inward investment and less jobs over the next five years. Neither Brown nor Clegg seem to realise that the UK has to compete globally for business, jobs and investment. We have written this letter because the UK desperately needs a government that encourages business, attracts investment and enables job creation”.
In reality, nobody really knows what policies would be pursued by a Lib-Lab pact, so the whole thing is idle conjecture; it’s just big (and some medium sized) business fears any increased power for the Lib Dems because they, their lobbyists and their trade bodies have been busy schmoozing the Cam Man for the last three years assuming he’d be the next PM. That would be a lot of wasted time and wine if he ends up being isolated by a Clegg-Brown partnership.
Of course, all of this ignores the very real risk that if, despite the Lib Dem’s recent popularity surge, the Tories do win next Thursday, the smile on David Cameron’s face will be so smug, it might result in a crack in the space-time continuum resulting in the end of the universe itself. Look at that face, it could happen.
