Brown 'would not find it impossible' to work with Liberals

Gordon Brown would not find it "impossible" to work with the Liberal Democrats if the forthcoming general election produced a hung Parliament, an ally of the British Prime Minister said today.

Former British Treasury minister Geoffrey Robinson made clear he believes the Lib Dems would choose to side with Labour rather than the Conservatives if they held the balance of power following the election.

He suggested that the Cabinet might have agreed to offer a referendum on the alternative vote (AV) voting system for Westminster elections in order to woo the third party.

Mr Robinson stressed that he was not speaking on behalf of Mr Brown, but he has long been close to the Prime Minister politically.

Asked if Mr Brown would be happy working with the Lib Dems in a hung Parliament, the Coventry North-West MP told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "He wouldn't find that impossible, I am quite sure.

"After all, we have given the undertaking that we would - if we were in government as the leading party as we would be in any sort of coalition - hold a national referendum on AV. That must be a huge attraction to the Liberals.

"When the Cabinet gave that undertaking, they could well have been envisaging the sort of situation that might arise after the election.

"I can't speak for (Mr Brown) and I can't predict the circumstances, but the mere fact that we gave that undertaking would indicate that that could be so."

Mr Robinson made clear he did not expect the Prime Minister or Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg to announce their intentions in the case of a hung Parliament during the election campaign which is expected to start on Tuesday. But he left no doubt that he believes both sides would prefer to co-operate with one another than let in a Conservative-dominated administration.

"Everybody in an election is committed to winning it and we have to therefore not expect any clear indication from the Government or from the Liberals what they might do after the election," he said.

"But reading between the lines, I think that if there is a three-way split - which there could be - and the Liberals.... found there was a government with the Labour Party which they felt they could play a useful part in, pursuing the AV agenda, securing the recovery... If they saw that, I don't see why they wouldn't."

Mr Robinson said that the Liberal Democrats had already sided with Labour on the issue of Chancellor Alistair Darling's planned 1% hike in National Insurance, which shot to the top of the election agenda last week when the Conservatives, backed by a number of business leaders, said they would scrap it.

Former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy said Mr Robinson's comments were "interesting and at one level a statement of the blindingly obvious".

Mr Kennedy told the 'Today' programme that Mr Clegg was following "the only rational formula that any Liberal Democrat leader can have" when responding to queries about how he would act in a hung Parliament.

"We set out very clearly without idle speculation or staring into crystal balls - because nobody knows what is going to happen once the votes are counted - what we stand for and what we will campaign for as Liberal Democrats," he said.

"The more of us you get in the House of Commons, the more likely you are to have those principles pursued."

Mr Kennedy said that coalition administrations and co-operation between parties were now a day-to-day reality in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, adding: "The idea that we can't talk to each other is one of the absurdities of the political system we have in this country."

Nick Clegg's chief of staff Danny Alexander said: "Gordon Brown's Labour Government has been an abject failure.

He has presided over the worst recession for more than 60 years, widened the gap between the rich and the poor, created a hugely unfair tax system and a rotten political system.

"Neither Labour nor the Conservatives will ever bring the change Britain needs, only the Liberal Democrats will.

"After years of Labour failure, the Liberal Democrats are fighting to deliver change. It will be for the British people to decide who forms the next Government, not the fantasies of a ministerial has-been."