Dave and Nick need to fake it now that the romance has gone

With the Prime Minister now attacking his deputy openly on the radio, it’s clear that the early truce is over. How will the two parties convince voters that coalition is still a viable option for 2015?

By Rafael Behr Published 23 June 2011

The Liberal Democrats are usually glad when the power they wield behind the scenes in government is advertised in public. It helps rebut the claim that they are helpless hostages of a Tory junta. So when David Cameron said in a radio interview on 20 June that the Lib Dems had watered down proposals on immigration and welfare reform, it might have been seen as a boost to the junior coalition partner. It wasn't. It was an attack and Nick Clegg knows it.

The Prime Minister chose two policy areas where opinion polls show a voracious public appetite for "tough" measures. It was a rehearsal of lines for the next general election. We are doing our best, Cameron seemed to say, but it's hard with these bleating Liberals on board. George Osborne has paid a more sincere compliment to the Lib Dems, only not in public and not to their faces. It follows Nick Clegg's campaign to disrupt the passage of government NHS reforms and then claim credit for taming the Tories' wilder free-market excesses. The Chancellor has told close colleagues that, if the roles were reversed, he would have done exactly the same.

That is praise from a man widely regarded - not least by himself - as one of the smartest tacticians in the game. But it is not a healthy relationship when partners cynically admire the innovative methods they use for hurting each other.

Flagship wreck

Clegg's agitation over the NHS has lifted the Lib Dems' morale but not their wretched poll ratings. Meanwhile, Conservative private polling shows that the government's "listening exercise", which was meant to ease anxiety over the health reform, barely registered with the voters. People have come away from the whole episode with the impression of nothing but a policy shambles.

That is bad for both parties. Failure to pilot a flagship proposal smoothly through parliament has made Cameron look careless and weak, but Clegg can hardly build an electoral recovery by casting himself as an iceberg, lurking mostly beneath the surface and waiting to sink Tory boats. If the Lib Dems block too much legislation, the Tories will denounce them as unfit for office. "There's no advantage to us from stalemate government," says a senior Clegg aide.

The Lib Dem top brass and MPs met recently for an away day in a converted Gothic mansion in the Yorkshire countryside to discuss ways
of reasserting their identity. The message that emerged was "compassion and competence" - working with the Tories to get the public finances in order while seeking definition through issues that appeal to liberal-minded voters: the environment, social care, social mobility. But there are no easy victories before an election. The Lib Dems won't avert climate change by 2015. There are also areas where differentiation from the Tories is a hazard. Clegg's pro-Europeanism is no electoral tonic.

Cameron's approach to coalition is also shifting, in a way that reflects competing philosophies and temperaments in the Prime Minister's inner circle. On one side are the romantics: Oliver Letwin, the minister in charge of co-ordinating policy across government, and Steve Hilton, Cameron's main policy adviser. They take a grand, holistic approach, urging sweeping change on all fronts. The ambition is to transform the way government works and permanently alter people's expectations of what the state will provide. Letwin talks about "shifting the centre" of politics, which means embracing coalition as part of a grand realignment.

On the other side are the pragmatists: Osborne and Andrew Cooper, Cameron's head of strategy. They prefer to look at policies on their individual merits, pushing the ones that advance the Tory electoral cause - such as welfare cuts - and ditching those that don't - such as Ken Clarke's prison-sentencing reforms. The Tory pragmatists are not hostile to coalition; after all, it has given the leadership cover to distance itself from the party's right wing. But they see the arrangement more as part of a two-term tactical operation. Osborne's relentless focus is on securing a majority in 2015.

Pragmatism is in the ascendant. Letwin has suffered from his failure to sound an early alarm about the danger posed by the NHS reforms. He has a reputation as an intellectual Titan but a tactical naif. "No one is under the illusion that he's a political animal," says a government adviser. Similarly, Hilton urged Cameron not to waver on health reform when it should have been clear the issue was harming the PM.

The Lib Dems are just as wary of romanticism for fear of looking like automatic allies of the Tories, thereby closing off the option of future collaboration with Labour. "We've signed up to this coalition on a pragmatic basis, not an ideological one," says a Lib Dem member of cabinet.

A project launched last November to map out joint ambitions for later in the parliament - "Coalition 2.0" - has been downgraded. Ministers still meet to discuss the project every few weeks, but the original notion that this might produce a successor to last year's formal coalition agreement has been shelved. Any such deal would have to be sold to backbench MPs, a prospect relished by neither party leader.

Life after love

Last May, Clegg and Cameron were pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to make two-party government work. At that stage they had a shared interest in presenting coalition as the answer to the nation's problems. Romance blossomed on the Downing Street lawn.

Such harmony masked conflicting views of what coalition means. The Lib Dems need to normalise multiparty government as part of the repertoire of British politics, one of the regular menu options at election time. The Tories increasingly want coalition to be seen as a one-off solution to a unique challenge - the need for a stable parliamentary majority to tackle a Budget deficit of roughly £150bn.

The two parties' interests still overlap but on a dwindling patch of turf. That means more ruthless competition to own - and disown - policy. Yet voters are unlikely to appreciate four years of infighting between the two governing parties. Clegg and Cameron both need to make coalition look like an effective and harmonious system of government again, but neither of them has worked out how to fake it now that the romance has gone.

Rafael Behr is chief political commentator of the New Statesman

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Tags: Nick Clegg David Cameron

26 comments

Mon, 2011-06-27 19:21 — gerry (not verified)

JFro - I am just being factual here: Britain is a small c conservative country...and knowing this helps to explain the rise and continued dominance of 1980s Thatcherism, the creation and electoral success of New Labour, the realignment of the Lib Dems/Cons as a Thatcherite coalition, Blue Labour..etc etc!

Fri, 2011-07-08 08:37 — cgcenet

The disappointing result for the Lib Dems in 2010 happened because the party's campaign management let itself get distracted by Cleggmania and lost sight of its local targeting strategy. The idea that a single national narrative was all-important was what lost it for us. It would not have happened if Chris Rennard had still been in charge...

Lib Dems ALREADY have, and always have had, a coherent political direction: it is called LIBERALISM. The idea that the Lib Dems campaign from the "left" in Labour areas and from the "right" in Tory areas is inaccurate (if anything it's the other way round). Lib Dem campaigning against Labour involves attacks on Labour inefficiency in local government, challenging municipal socialism, centralism, 'loony left' excesses and Labour one-party states. It is, and always was, about supporting individual liberties, democracy and decentralism, the same as it is when our opponents are right-wing. There is NO inconsistency in supporting liberalism against both left-wing and right-wing attacks. In 2002 the Lib Dems formed a coalition with the Tories in Lambeth to oust a loony left Labour administration. This is not evidence of a right-wing alignment, but an appropriate response to local circumstances, where the principal enemy of liberalism was a left-wing one. But liberalism has right-wing enemies too, in the form of traditionalist, centralising, corporatist conservatism, which is defends the interests of the rich and corporations against individuals. It would be inconsistent to only respond to left-wing attacks on individual liberty, and not the right-wing ones: like the loony leftists who used to protest against Apartheid, but were silent over brutal oppression in the Soviet Bloc.

Fri, 2011-07-08 08:51 — cgcenet

gerry: on your view that the Lib Dems will and should become latter-day National Liberals, I guess we'll just have to agree to differ. But i still don't think it'll happen, as the party knows well what happened last time.

Thu, 2011-06-23 19:43 — gerry (not verified)

Cameron and Clegg are actually very clever, and agree that both parties will win if they manage to realign their bloc in 2015.

The Lib Dems have no other option - Tory tactical voting will deliver them at least 50 seats in 2015, may be more. Clegg, Laws and Alexander dont need to get 23% of the vote as they did in 2010, if they and the Cons pull it off, they can - together- win 380-400 seats in 2015. Easily

Both leaders know that Britain, esp England, is a small c conservative country. Tony Blair knew that instinctively too, which is why he was Labour's most electorally successful leader, ever

At least 50% of the electorate, and up to 60%, want a sensible right wing/Thatcherite government, with a law and order/anti-immigration and tough welfare stance. The only state service they dont really want fully Thatcherised is the NHS...which is why the Lib Dems/Cons have got their knickers in a twist over their reforms.

And Cameron does not want to depend, electorally, on his Eurosceptic /hard right MPs - he has the chaos of the Major years burnt into his psyche.

So Lib Dems and Cons will get over this - they have no other choice really. The (electoral) future - if they solidify their right wing realignment) - is actually very bright for both if they hold their nerve.

Fri, 2011-07-01 14:21 — cgcenet

@gerry: your idea of a Lib Dems/Con realignment would be electoral suicide for the Lib Dems, who would lose all of their left-leaning supporters. What would remain of the Lib Dems would eventually be absorbed into the Tories as Nat Libs 2.0. Therefore, it won't happen. It would NOT lead to a permanent centre-right government, as you suppose, but a return to pure two-party politics.

Mon, 2011-07-04 15:08 — cgcenet

Gerry: Once again, whatever the leaderships may have agreed, it does not imply that the party grassroots will or should go along with it. And if the Lib Dem leadership were agreeing its campaign strategy with the Tories, then that would be a serious breach of party regulations. The Blair/Ashdown "Project" didn't involve any formal pacts or alliances either, but it was enough for the party to put in place the "triple lock" mechanism to prevent future leaders from selling the party out in that way.

If you think that a Lib Dem/Tory agreement would not compromise the Lib Dem party's independence, look at the demise of the Progressive Democrats in Ireland. The PD vote collapsed in the 2007 general election because they had become so close to Fianna Fail (including a preference-trading deal) that voters saw no reason to vote PD instead of FF. The same could happen in UK: apart from the haemorraging of support from left-leaning voters, voters in LD-Con battlegrounds (still the great majority of Lib Dem held and target seats) would see no reason to vote Lib Dem instead of Tory. We have to distinguish ourselves from the Tories (as well as from Labour), and the only way to do that is to run a campaign that's totally independent of them. Of course we shall be defending a shared record, but the sensible Lib Dem strategy will be to claim the credit for Lib Dem components, and say what we would have done differently. We should also point out the voting and bedfellows of Tories in the European Parliament (where there is no agreement between the two parties), and hold it up as an example of how the Tories might behave in government on their own.

And of course it's mainly Tories who support this realignment project: it is them who woudl benefit from the neutering of the Lib Dems! And John Major's government was having trouble when it had an overall majority. If the Tories win next time with a majority, then they're on their own: the raving right will become their problem alone. Of course the Lib Dems would vote with the government on stuff it supported (as they did from time to time for the Major government over Europe) but that is as far as it would go.

Thu, 2011-06-23 21:48 — matthew fox (not verified)

There will still be a deficit in 2015, thanks to Osborne, even the OBR have had to admit it will be a minimum of £23 Billion at 2015.

Then again Clegg is trying to buy popularity by trying to away shares in RBS and Lloyds. Considering both banks are trading at 45p and 38p respectively, well below the price they where bought, and with the news the banks and other financial institutions are exposed to £360 Billion worth of debt if Greece goes bust.

Sat, 2011-07-02 19:57 — cgcenet

@gerry: There is no "right alignment" strategy in the Lib Dems that the party has agreed on, and any proposal for such a strategy would be laughed out of conference. Even if the party leadership did want it, the party leadership is not the same as the party. The Lib Dems (and I write as one) are not a Stalinist or fascist party in terms of party management: the party is not owned by its leader; the leadership cannot impose any sort of arrangement with another party on the rank and file. Maybe the Tory party is less democratic, and Mr Cameron can dictate to his party that it is doing a deal with the Lib Dems. But in the Lib Dems there is a robust democratic process that any leader wishing to impose a deal would have to go through. The Lib Dems are also constitutionally mandated to contest every seat in UK parliamentary elections, making any formal electoral pact off the cards. And Lib Dem activists who have been working their patch for many years would not accept any leadership diktat to soft-pedal or stand aside to help the Tories whom they regard as their main enemy.

The Lib Dems will fight the next election as an independent party with no pre-election coalition preference, simply because the vast majority of Lib Dem party activists will not fight it any other way.

Sat, 2011-07-02 20:35 — gerry (not verified)

cgcenet - the Lib Dem leadership HAVE agreed this realignment strategy and have been putting it into practice since last May, in partnership with Cameron, Osborne and the Tory modernisers. It is not a secret in Westminster...why is it such a shock to you?

And it does not involve a formal deal with each other - both leaderships know that it would be quite divisive to do that openly, angering the Eurosceptic.hard right minority in the Tories, and the social liberal minority in your party.

As we saw, the Oldham by-election was the testbed, and the Lib Dem vote held steady whilst the Tory vote halved - Gove, Maude, Letwin and other modernisers explicitly told local Tory voters to back the Lib Dem, and the Tory "campaign" was deliberately low-key, some say non-existent!

The Lib Dem leadership and Cameron/Osborne, I have been reliably informed, have identified 100-120 seats mainly in England where the battle is between Lib Dem and Labour, and the Tories nowhere.

The strategy at the next general election will NOT involve Lib Dems having to agree anything at conference - no deal to agree, ie, but the Tories will 100% be urging all their voters in those specific seats to "put the national interest first" and back the Lib Dem to stop Labour - and they have detailed polling of their voters which tells them that at least 50% of their supporters in those seats, and up to 70% of them, will do just that!

So this is win-win for both parties, and Tory votes will certainly count in those specific Lib Dem/Lab marginals, Northern, urban and Midlands seats.

Lib Dems and Cons - if they pull it off - can look forward to a generation in government together, and Lib Dem activists would be committing electoral suicide if they cant see that...as Nick Clegg has said, its time for grown up, adult politics.

Sat, 2011-07-02 22:12 — cgcenet

@gerry: If the Lib Dem leadership were making informal agreements with the Tories behind the backs of the party grassroots, then there would be a huge backlash from the grassroots. Surely you must remember the massive opposition from ordinary Lib Dem party members to the Blair/Ashdown project. Motions passed at Lib Dem party conference have demanded that the party fight elections as an independent party and not make pre-election deals of any kind. And the social liberal faction in the Lib Dems is the majority. Look at the popularity of its recent conference. Can you imagine Liberal Vision running a successful conference like that? Not that it would run a conference open to all and sundry -- right-wing groups in the Lib Dems don't work like that, as they try to avoid testing their ideas in public. They instead try to bypass party democracy. They use think-tanks and the like to spread exactly the kind of "rumours" about party strategy (that the foundations are being laid for deals with the Tories) that you are repeating as fact, with the aim of making them self-fulfilling. But just as your assumption that the party is tool of its leader is wrong, so is your assumption that what goes on at Westminster is all that matters in British politics.

Would the Tories really agree to step aside or soft-pedal in some seats without some sort of quid pro quo? I don't think so. Even if they don't demand the same in certain other seats, they will demand linkages in other ways (e.g. no criticism of Tory policy or campaigning). And whatever happens, it would mean that the Lib Dems are reduced to fighting elections as a sub-brand of the Tories: what centre-right voters vote for in the north of England. And once again, no Lib Dem activist wants to campaign that way. And anyway the Lib Dems will lose a lot of support to Labour and the Greens, so probably leaving an electorate balanced between left-wing and right-wing voters. So it would not be Lib Dems and Tories in power for a generation. It would be Lab/Con alternation once again, with a neutered Lib Dem party. Not grown-up politics, but poodle politics. It would be win:lose, with the Tories winning (once again they'll be more likely than not to be in power), and the Lib Dems losing their identity.