100 days: State of the coalition
In the third of politics.co.uk’s week-long series of features on the government’s first 100 days in power, we look at the state of the coalition partners’ relationship.
By Ian Dunt
As he sat in the Boot & Flogger wine bar in Southwark last month chatting with old work colleagues, David Davis probably did not consider that he was about to do Nick Clegg a big favour.
At a table next to him, some FT journalists, barely able to believe their luck, jotted down what he was saying. Lord Ashcroft, Davis told his friends, branded David Cameron and Clegg the ‘Brokeback Coalition’, in a play on the Oscar-winning gay cowboy movie. The joke doesn’t quite have the same visual effectiveness as the description of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness as the ‘chuckle brothers’, but it was a bizarrely useful contribution, in that it corroborated Clegg’s insistence that the Lib Dems had real influence in government. The fact it came from the Tories’ main donor and deputy chairman gave it extra weight. The fact the information was snatched from a private conversation proved that, internally, the Conservatives believed everything they were saying publically about the coalition.
That Clegg and Cameron got on well was quite evident from the day they took to their lecterns at the rose garden press conference. Their initial meet and greet outside No 10 was awkward, with both men trying to prove their dominance to the cameras by repeatedly putting their arm behind the other’s back. But by the time they reached the press conference, they appeared equals – and genuinely on the same page. That perception remains today, with many commentators noting that the two men seem to have more in common with each other than they do their own parties.
It’s not just personal, it’s also political. The coalition marks the victory of the ‘Orange Bookers’, the tribe of Lib Dem MPs who are economically as well as socially liberal. Liberalism has always been an odd and unhelpful word, signifying leftie policies to right- wingers, and free market economics to left-wingers. All Lib Dems are socially liberal, but not all of them are economically liberal. Some sections of the party have begun to brand the Lib Dem ministers neo-Liberal Democrats, in a phrase with echoes of the anti-globalisation movement.
The party’s divisions have therefore never been more pronounced. Clegg knows he must pacify it. First of all, he must secure his three-pronged agenda: the AV referendum (being held, not necessarily won), constitutional reform (including House of Lords reform) and civil liberties. Failure in any of these areas will spark rebellion in his left-wing backbenchers. In the meantime, deputy leader Simon Hughes must act to express a party political identity on the national stage, sounding a much more robustly left-wing voice than his boss.
Journalists are keen on comparing stories of discontented left-wing Lib Dems with right-wing Tory backbenchers, but the analogy is not quite satisfactory. While the coalition agreement revealed that a surprising number of Lib Dem policies would be honoured by the Tories, there was very little there to put fear in Conservative hearts. In contrast, some Lib Dem MPs can barely stomach the deficit reduction plan, a fact which was quite evident when they sat in stony silence listening to the emergency Budget next to their joyous Conservative colleagues. There are no such wounds for the Tory right.
The AV referendum is the closest thing to it, and indeed scores of Tory backbenchers are doing their best to obstruct it through a private members bill. But the AV would hardly be a devastating development for the Conservatives, even if the ‘yes’ vote succeeds. It isn’t proportional representation, and it hardly adds up to a revolutionary change from the status quo. Where discontent exists, it is not so much down to individual policies, but to a general rhetoric, a tone to the government’s pronouncements. Cameron picks no fights with Europe. He speaks as a moderate, a centrist. He is not going out of his way to offer bread crumbs to the Tory right.
But in the foreground remains the deficit reduction programme. This is classic fiscal conservatism. It unites the right, and it unites the left – hence Labour’s rapidly improving poll support. Tory backbenchers love it, and it will make them behave for the time being.
The Lib Dem left and the Tory right can be kept in line as long as they are fed enough meat – for the Lib Dems that’s the three-pronged Clegg agenda and Hughes’ sub-plot measures, such as a vote on gay marriage at the party conference. For the Tory right, that’s the deficit reduction plan, with a complimentary sprinkling of Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms.
To maintain the coalition Clegg and Cameron must then ensure that they do not break the neutralising effect of their own relationship. They know each others’ red lines. Cameron could easily make an off-the-cuff statement, or buckle under a concerted tabloid campaign, in a manner which would prompt rebellion in the Lib Dem ranks.
Nevertheless, the greatest threat to the coalition remains the individual fortunes of the two parties within it. If either partner becomes significantly weaker than the other, the dominant party will feel it can do without it. Opinion polls show a clear increase in Tory support and a substantial drop in Lib Dem support. This is part punishment for going into coalition with the Tories and partly a result of them not communicating a distinct identity.
Few people, apart from anoraks and obsessives, are paying too much attention to the polls right now. We are very far away from an election, and the public remain volatile and fickle. These figures can be easily reversed by the time it matters again. But to stop a further deterioration in Lib Dem support three things need to happen. One: Hughes must succeed in cementing a separate Lib Dem identity in the media. Two: Clegg must deliver results. Three: Ed Miliband must not become Labour leader.
A David Miliband leadership will help the Lib Dems by granting them a monopoly among those non-Tory voters suspicious of Labour’s authoritarian tendencies and foreign policy. If an anti-war, pro-civil liberties Labour leader is elected, the Lib Dems are in real trouble. Those supporters motivated by economic issues will go back to Labour, and the middle class liberals who flocked to Charles Kennedy in 2005 will gradually join them.
The coalition must also be wary of the extent to which traditional ministerial negotiation is spilling over into public debate. Take the formulation of a policy toward university funding. The Tories want to reduce the deficit. The Lib Dems want to keep the student voters who make up their dominant constituency. Vince Cable’s way of squaring this circle was a graduate tax payable after university but only by those who earned above a certain level. The speech he held to make the case made it look as if it was clearly going to be government policy. Days later, an unnamed minister told the BBC it wouldn’t be. Sometime after that, Francis Maude informed us that it may very well be. This messy, rather public method of policy formulation is acceptable now while we are still in relatively pleasant waters. But later, when the cuts bite, the left galvanises opposition and some crisis or other highlights divisions between the partners, each of these inconsistencies will be met by howls of impending doom from the media. Media storms can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and intense media coverage of fractures in the coalition will eventually serve to worsen those divisions.
The coalition agreement, with its frantic attempt to fix a no-confidence motion out of the reach of either partner, was built around the belief that it would last the full five years. Both Cameron and Clegg knew that to serve the national interest and calm the markets the country needed certainty in a period of unique political indecision. It is still more likely to last the five years than it is to fall apart, merely by virtue of the fact that all the top people are genuinely committed to it. But as Harold Wilson said, politics is about events.
If the coalition falls apart it will be because an event comes along which encapsulates deeply-held philosophical divisions between the parties. It could be the Human Rights Act, crime, Europe, or an international crisis. The basis for fracture and division is already there. A perfect storm of radically unequal popularity, rebellious backbenchers, open ministerial rows and one unpredictable, explosive event could easily see the disintegration of Britain’s grand new political experiment.
