Saturday 16th March

One of the perennial criticisms of coalitions, such as Isreal and Italy have lived with for years, is that they are fragile, unstable and ultimately satisfy none of the supporters of the coalition-ees. This one was supposed to be different; this was an almost ‘holy’ alliance with the single objective of rescuing Britain from the Deficit and to eventually reduce our Debt.  Not much progress on that front so far of course.  One could say with hindsight (and I screamed it at the time) that the Lib-Dems were incredibly naïve and would have been far better to have held out for supporting a minority Tory administration on the economy but free to oppose where it felt it needed to on social issues.

Part of the trouble is that the Tories had been out of power for thirteen years and desperately wanted to change everything overnight, and the Lib-Dems gave them the opportunity to do so. On ‘The Week in Politics’ last night Portillo said that the policies being pursued by the coalition were voted for by over 60% of the electorate.  But no, hardly any of the policies now being enacted were mentioned in the election campaign by either of the two coalition partners.

And the Lib-Dems have suffered so much opprobrium that they felt their only chance was to stay the course and remain in the coalition.  And Clegg, love or hate him, has managed to hold his party together extremely well.  Not so Mr. Cameron, possibly because most of his party know they will be re-elected as MPs whatever happens, but also because of the restrictions of being in a coalition, with every ‘soft social climb-down’ being branded a Lib-Dem policy by the far-right.

But we are now only 2 years at most away form a general election and nerves are beginning to fray.  The Lib-Dems are beginning to realise that not only may they lose quite a few seats (though maybe not as many as some fear) and a big percentage drop in their vote, but also the possibility that they may actually have to go into coalition with Labour next time.

And the Tories are realizing that without the boundary changes they lost in their House of Lords spat with the Lib-Dems they must be at least 7% ahead of Labour to stand any chance of even being the largest party, let alone winning outright.

I suspect that the coalition will remain in place, but more and more in name only.  The Lib-Dems will vote with Labour on Leveson, and maybe on Minimum Alcohol Pricing, and will begin to position themselves again to the left of the Tories, and try to retain at least their core voters.  There is no real serious contender to either Clegg or Cameron in this Parliament, but come defeat and all the gloves will be off.  Also watch out for a 2014 election; despite everything Cameron has said – if the polls start to narrow he might seize his chance especially if negotiations with Europe get sticky and he finds an issue he can maybe fight on.