A Coalition of the Losers will damage the Union

As Gordon Brown apparently has now called in the progressives of the DUP for a chat about joining his rainbow coalition, expect a lot more of this over the next few days:

English taxpayers face being held to ransom by Scottish and Welsh nationalists in a 'rainbow' coalition to prop up Labour - despite having voted overwhelmingly for the Conservatives.

Even though Labour and the Liberal Democrats have now entered talks over a possible deal, they will only get a Commons majority if they ally themselves with minority parties from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

But these parties, such as the SNP and Plaid Cymru, have said they will demand their countries be protected from cuts as a price for keeping Labour in No 10.

Although last week's election was inconclusive across the UK, in England the Tories gained a massive majority of 62 - and won nearly three million votes from Labour.

If such a coalition (and let's hope, just for the Dupe's sake, they adopt the rainbow as its symbol)gets off the ground, we are not looking at a stable, long-lasting government; I'm sure Labour and the Lib Dems would find enough common ground to get by but as you all will have been told by now ad infinitum, they need more MPs on board.

The Plaid Cymru and SNP are in a win-win situation in this scenario - they either get their immunity from cuts (and the attendant rise in English resentment) or they get an increasingly unstable UK political (and economic) situation. The reverse is obviously true for both Labour and the Lib-Dems - if the electorate had wanted them to deliver a solution for the mess we're in, then they would have given them the mandate to do so but they quite clearly didn't.

Regionalist bribes to keep the DUP, Plaid Cymru and the SNP on board will not deliver them (Lab and the LDs) more electoral support and that mandate at the next (in all probability, imminent) election.
Regionalist bribes will not deliver the hard economic solutions needed to answer the nation's problems.
Regionalist bribes will, however, damage the Union for the reasons highlighted in the article.

Let's hope that smarter and more principled heads within the Labour Party realise soon the danger they are placing not only their party, but much more importantly, the United Kingdom in; they are attempting to do *deals* with parties and politicians who, at best, have no real concern for the interests of (and at worst, an active hatred for) our shared nation.