Mr Brown and Mr Clegg

I am glad to see others are worried what Brown is up to.  The Telegraph has a short speculative piece wondering if the LibDems will be tempted to save Moses.  A Cabinet minister tells the paper:

We have to be looking at reshaping the whole Government and not just a simple reshuffle of the Cabinet that rarely means anything to the wider public.

Then:

One radical idea would be to bring senior Liberal Democrat MPs into Government, the most obvious being Vince Cable. That would involve a series of deals behind the scenes involving Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader.

But:

Last night Labour sources suggested that any such deals were still a long way off.

Brown’s problem is time.  He has just days to pull some rabbits out of the hat.  Yes, I suppose he could attempt to bring in the LibDems, the logic being that Labour could hold onto power at the election by doing so.  However, would the LibDems want to tie themselves to Labour at this stage of a Parliament and would they stay united if Clegg backed Labour?  On both counts, this would be doubtful.  The danger for both parties is that if the overtures fail and the talks leak, it would leave Brown very exposed, not to mention what it would do to Clegg’s credibility.

One for the too hard basket.  But with short-term tactical Brown, you never know.