Nick
Clegg could serve as prime minister for a month after the general election
until a new coalition is formed, a senior Lib Dem MP has suggested.
Former
defence minister Sir Nick Harvey said unlike the 2010 coalition deal which was
hammered out in just five days, any negotiations after this May's poll should
take much longer.
In
an interview with The Huffington Post, Harvey said this would require an
"interim government" to be in place while political parties haggled
over the formation of a new administration.
Harvey
said as the incumbent, David Cameron should remain in Downing Street until a
deal was struck. But that if the Conservative leader "was so fucked
off" he wanted to leave then there was "no reason" why Clegg
could not fill the role - assuming of course the deputy prime minister keeps
his seat.
The
veteran Lib Dem MP also said it would be "much harder" for the party
leadership to convince its members to vote for another coalition and said he
would be "certainly willing" to argue in favour of the party staying
out of power.
Harvey,
who predicted Ed Miliband would wake up on 8 May with the most MPs, also said
the Lib Dems could fill half its ministerial positions in a future coalition
with members of the House of Lords - if the party sees its number of MPs
reduced to around 30.
He
was speaking to HufPost following the publication of his book, After the Rose
Garden, which examines the mistakes the Lib Dems made during the 2010
negotiations with the Tories.
"I
personally think that they should take at least a month," Harvey said when
asked how long any negotiations should last. "And I think that what you
need during the course of that month is some sort of interim government. Where
you've got a prime minister and home secretary and a chancellor. And maybe a
deputy prime minister. I don't think it is right to appoint a government of 121
members until such time as you have a deal. If the deal is going to take a
month, you could just appoint a government of eight or ten ministers.
