Vote Lib Dim - Get nuLabour
Co-operation between new Labour and the Liberal Democrats was assumed to have ended with the departure of Paddy Ashdown. A new biography of Charles Kennedy by a Times writer reveals that it actually continued in secret during the 2001 general election.
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Blair and Kennedy agreed to co-ordinate their national campaigns to maximise the electoral damage both could wreak on the Conservatives...
On Kennedy’s election as leader, Blair broke off his summer holiday to telephone with his congratulations and they agreed to meet soon. In the ensuing years they met many times, more often than the political world appreciated: alone, informally for dinner, with teams of advisers, across the Cabinet table in the Joint Cabinet Committee set up by Blair and Ashdown, spontaneously at state or parliamentary occasions......
At the Red Lion, Threshers, under the arches at Waterloo Bridge...
"Tony, mate, you're my bestest friend you are.."
"Yes Charles, have another"
"Tony, they don't understand me, but you do, I love you, I want you to be Mime Pinister, here's those papers you want, if you don't want that can of Special Brew pass it over, mate, you're my best mate you are...."