UK Labour leaders say talks unraveling with Liberal Democrats; Conservatives wait in the wings

Talks unravel in Britain between Labour

LONDON — Senior Labour officials said talks with the third-place Liberal Democrats on forming Britain’s next government had unraveled Tuesday - raising the prospect that Conservative leader David Cameron could soon become the country’s new prime minister.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office declined to confirm that talks between the second-place Labour Party and the third-place Liberal Democrats had failed, saying only that Brown had no plans to tender his government’s resignation to Queen Elizabeth II later Tuesday.

But other Labour lawmakers downplayed the prospects of their party clinging to power - saying the party clearly lacked the mandate to govern after finishing a distant second to the Conservatives in last week’s election.

“I think the sense that people will bargain on any basis to stay in power is unacceptable,” said Charles Falconer, who served as justice minister under Brown’s predecessor Tony Blair, adding it was time for Labour to “call it quits now.”

Five days after a May 6 vote that produced no outright winner, the Liberal Democrats were being wooed by both Labour and the Conservatives, hoping to extract maximum concessions in return for propping up a new administration.

But senior Labour legislators said they feared such a pact - dubbed a “coalition of the defeated” by Conservatives - would lack legitimacy and anger the public, who would then wreak revenge on Labour candidates in future elections.

“We have got to respect the result of the general election and you cannot get away from the fact that Labour didn’t win,” Labour’s Health Secretary Andy Burnham told the BBC.

Former Labour Party chairman Ian McCartney said Labour should forget a deal to stay in power, and focus on regrouping in opposition without Brown at their helm.

Cameron’s party has spent five days negotiating with the Liberal Democrats, led by Nick Clegg, and has said it is prepared to agree to either a formal coalition or a looser pact in which the Liberal Democrats support the Conservatives’ legislative agenda.

Clegg’s Liberal Democrats have demanded that Britain change its voting system toward proportional representation, which could greatly increase their future seats in Parliament. In the latest election, Liberal Democrats won almost a quarter of the overall vote but only 9 percent of House of Commons seats.

Conservatives for the most part are adamantly against changing the voting system, which favors Britain’s two larger parties. The Conservatives won 306 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons last week - just short of the 326 needed for a majority. Labour won 258 seats, Liberal Democrats won 57, and smaller parties took the rest.

Still, Cameron’s negotiators have pledged to “go the extra mile” to strike an agreement that would return the Conservatives to power for the first time since 1997.

Liberal Democrat lawmaker Roger Roberts said a decision on the Conservative offer would be made at a party meeting later Tuesday, and it was not certain the Liberal Democrats would accept.

“If necessary, we go into this alliance, but we must get electoral reform and a good package for the economy,” he told the BBC.

Conservative negotiator William Hague, Cameron’s de facto deputy, said Tuesday that a deal between his party and Clegg’s group was the only credible outcome.

“There should be a government with a strong and secure majority in the House of Commons,” Hague said.

Conservative lawmaker Nigel Evans told Sky News that his colleagues had been put on standby for their own meeting tonight.

“I can only assume that a deal looks as if it has been done and not been done with the Labour Party,” he said.

Should Brown offer his resignation to the queen, Cameron would be summoned to Buckingham Palace to be appointed as Britain’s next prime minister. Cameron’s office declined to say whether they expected deal to be announced later Tuesday, and Buckingham Palace would not comment on whether the queen was expecting a visit from the prime minister.

“I’m just in the dark, like all of you,” Cameron said, as he left a meeting with new Conservative lawmakers at the House of Commons.

Amid the political maneuvering, one thing is certain: The career of Brown - the Treasury chief who waited a decade in the wings for his chance to become prime minister - is ending.

Brown accepted blame Monday for Labour’s loss of 91 seats in last week’s election and its failure to win a parliamentary majority. No other party won outright either, resulting in the first “hung Parliament” since 1974.

“As leader of my party, I must accept that that is a judgment on me,” Brown said Monday, offering to step down before the Labour Party conference in September.

Financial markets kept a close watch on developments. The British pound, which had traded as low as $1.472, had risen by more than 1 cent against the dollar to $1.4957 Tuesday afternoon.

Associated Press Writers Paisley Dodds, Jennifer Quinn, Raphael G. Satter, Jill Lawless and Danica Kirka in London and Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin contributed to this report.