Huffington Post are reporting on their website that Ed Davey has predicted a Liberal Democrat-Labour coalition after 2015. This is based on an answer he gave to a question asked at the Social Liberal Forum conference on Saturday. Since it was yours truly that asked the question, I thought that my own perspective on it might be useful. Originally, I decided not to blog too heavily on his comments – especially as he’d asked the audience to respect his right to speak freely in a small Q+A without being publicly broadcast. I blog now on it only in light of Huffington Post publishing his answer.*

In his speech to the SLF conference on Saturday, Davey pointed out the nature of Liberal Democrat achievements in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and these were heavily advanced by running the department. In light of that, I asked him if he felt it was right for the party to prioritise the spreading of ministers across government in 2010, as opposed to prioritising running departments potentially more associated with Liberal Democrat interests. I also asked whether he thought their tactics might change in coalition negotiations next year, should there be another hung parliament.

His answer was to say that he felt Nick Clegg had got it right in 2010. To go ‘down the German route’ of having individual parties running individual departments might work in places where coalitions are common practice, but in the UK, it might have led to more rows, and less functional government.

Looking ahead to next year, Davey offered the hope that the Liberal Democrats will be involved in coalition talks again next year, and that he thinks that those talks will probably be first and foremost with Labour. Because the UK is ‘more used to coalition politics’, Davey suggests that the party would be able ‘negotiate even better’.

I don’t know who leaked it, but the Huffington Post has Davey’s answer pretty much word for word. It’s received quite a lot of attention. Perhaps deservedly so, but I’m not sure it’s so big. Davey was expressing no view as to which party he would rather the Liberal Democrats were negotiating with, but more his own reading of the current state of public opinion. Labour are still leading in the opinion polls and the nature of electoral geography gives them an advantage over the Conservatives next year (for more on this, see Stephen Fisher’s forecasts here).

HuffPo say that Davey’s ‘comments offer an insight into the strategic thinking of the party leadership as May 2015 draws near‘. In a sense, they do. The Liberal Democrats will look to be better prepared for coalition talks after the next election. However, on their own, I’m not sure they tell us much more than that. How the party is preparing for talks can be analysed better by policy announcements in the run up to the election, and of course the actual election result itself.

*UPDATE: Ned Simons, author of the Huffington Post article, has pointed out to me that there was press access to this discussion anyway, so it wasn’t leaked as such.