WORLDVIEW:The UK coalition parties seem to be getting along nicely as they unveil ambitious and radical policy agendas, writes PATRICK SMYTH
‘MY ADVICE is, don’t peak too early.” George Bush’s advice notwithstanding, it is a truism about American politics that a new president with a change agenda must hit the ground running. The cycle of politics is such that within a year he is already finding his role constrained by the mid-terms and the nervousness of his troops in Congress. The challenge is then, as Tory advisers have been counselling a receptive prime minister David Cameron, to “frontload the pain”. Go for it.
In Britain there has never traditionally been the same sense of urgency. Most governments, even those imbued with reforming zeal like Tony Blair’s and Margaret Thatcher’s, have taken their time to unroll their major projects. Not so Cameron’s coalition. There was a widespread sense this week, as his new government hit its 100 days, of an administration that is already comfortable in wielding power, and already well into its ambitious and radical policy agenda, or, more accurately, policy agendas.
Indeed, it’s a government that seems confusingly to face Janus-like several ways, and not just along the two parties’ ideological divide. Cameron, who paints himself as a modernising pragmatist, echoes a “One Nation” Toryism, that harks back to Macmillan with talk of the “Big Society” and an emphasis on social mobility. Essentially, some would say, it is akin to an unfinished Blair-Brown agenda. Yet former Tory chairman and cabinet office minister Francis Maude boasts about completing the unfinished Thatcher agenda. Liberals, with a small “l”, on their commitment to civil rights like abolishing ID cards, neo-liberal on the economy.
But, such ambiguities aside, the relative harmony of the coalition is its most remarkable feature. Many observers talk of Cameron as having slipped seamlessly into the job with the air of a man “born to rule”, unlike the permanently awkward Gordon Brown or theatrical Blair. Never more so than in his remarkable apology for Bloody Sunday. His relationship with the Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is reported to be exceedingly good, as are relations within cabinet and between the aides of both parties.
Three months! Only three months? And few now express the coalition’s life expectancy in months or short years, as some once did.
The scale of this administration’s ambition has been its biggest surprise. Not content with a plan to transform into surplus in five years a deficit that costs the country £1 (€1.22) in borrowings for every £4 it spends, ministers are lining up with one grand scheme after another. Michael Gove says he aims to transform education in England; Andrew Lansley has embarked on the largest reorganisation of the health service since the NHS’s founding in 1948; former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith wants a full upheaval of the entire system of welfare and benefits.
The Tory lead has shrunk, a Guardian ICM poll putting it and Labour on 37 per cent. But the party gets a thumbs up on its economic management with 44 per cent saying the coalition is doing a good job to 37 against. The public has clearly accepted the central coalition thrust of the necessity to tackle the deficit, and is unconvinced by Labour warnings that spending cuts may cause a double-dip recession. Even chancellor George Osbourne’s pledge to reduce spending by government departments by 25 to 40 per cent by the end of five years, a promise that dwarfs Thatcher ambitions, has not yet phased the electorate.
In truth, as the Guardian’s Michael White recalls: “Jim Callaghan the last Labour leader before Brown to lose an election conceded in memoirs that defeated parties must have the grace to accept the will of an electorate until the new team’s errors become obvious to all.”
A leaderless Labour Party has nevertheless gained seven points since the election, largely at the Lib Dems expense, but this is more a problem for Clegg than Cameron, the junior partner having a rough time convincing even his own supporters that his party is making a distinctive contribution. Half of Lib Dem backers accept the definition of the coalition as a “Conservative-dominated government propped up by the Lib Dems”.
Playing on unresolved uncertainties within the party’s rank and file about its identity in coalition, Labour leadership front-runner David Miliband has warned the Lib Dems they are about to get gobbled up: “If you go to tea with an alligator, don’t be surprised if you get eaten.”
And, most ominously for the Lib Dems, the poll showed their prized electoral reform agenda, the price of coalition, is far from secure. In May it enjoyed a 21-point margin of support – now pro- and anti- forces are neck and neck on 45 per cent. And the referendum Bill may not even get through the Commons as Labour shows every sign of aligning with Tory reform opponents to block it.
It will be the first critical test of David Milliband’s leadership should he win next month. But he would do well to hasten slowly. The appealing short-term advantage of embarrassing the coalition, even of undermining it fatally, may not actually be in Labour’s long-term interests if, as Peter Mandelson has been pointing out, Britain is now entering a new period of hung parliaments in which the old duopoly has been decisively broken. The Labour and Tory share of the votes has fallen since the war from 96.8 per cent in 1951 to 67.1 per cent at the last election. Even if the Lib Dems lose electoral reform, it appears unlikely that either of the main parties will be able to rule alone.
But Labour currently appears unconvinced, and its strategy is clearly based on the idea that it can kill off the Lib Dems and return politics in Britain to its default “normal” mode. Yet, if it is successful in this strategy there is no guarantee the electorate will reward it with a clear majority. If unsuccessful, the party may well simply push Lib Dems and Tories further together and make a future deal with Lib Dems, once they become disillusioned with their current partners, increasingly difficult.