The LibDems' decision to join the Tories in government will cost them in the long term, just as the lack of a second effective opposition party will cost democracy
Of the bills announced in the Queen’s Speech, about half can be said to belong to the Conservatives, about a fifth to the Liberal Democrats. Both parties can claim proprietary rights over the remainder. Is this how a coalition government is supposed to work? Nobody is sure, since coalitions are so unfamiliar to the British political culture. But we can be certain of one thing: the whips of each coalition party will be crucial in ensuring legislation goes through.
All MPs sometimes vote against conscience – or, more importantly, judgement – because they want to keep their party labels. Losing the party whip leaves them on their own at the next election. Former prime minister Harold Wilson once compared his MPs to licensed dogs and warned unruly backbenchers that mongrels were entitled to only one bite.
How many bites will the coalition allow Tory and LibDem backbenchers? Governments usually offer concessions to rebellious MPs, but that will be harder when each proposal already embodies a carefully crafted deal. For example, LibDem MPs might protest at the welfare reform Bill, and Tory MPs at the proposed rise in capital gains tax. But concessions to either would risk a corresponding rebellion from the other.
If the more libertarian aspects of Nick Clegg’s Freedom (Great Repeal) Bill – fewer restrictions on protests and demonstrations, say – are watered down to mollify authoritarian Tory backbenchers, will LibDem MPs then want to weaken Tory plans for ‘free schools’? Since British political parties are coalitions in themselves, squaring the various factions was always difficult. Now it will be like playing chess simultaneously against six opponents while somebody else keeps switching pieces around on your side of the board.
The LibDems will face the most acute dilemmas. First, and most obviously, they are many fewer in number than the Conservatives. The government would fall if all Tory backbenchers deserted, as happened in 1922, the last time a Tory-Liberal coalition held office. It wouldn’t fall if all LibDem backbenchers deserted. Secondly, LibDems have many fewer safe seats than other parties: only eight have majorities of more than 10,000 and only Nick Clegg in Sheffield Hallam has a majority of more than 15,000. If Parliament is dissolved, most LibDem MPs might not return. A Tory threat to force an election is credible, a LibDem threat isn’t.
Thirdly, the Tories possess a nuclear deterrent: the threat that, if the LibDems rock the coalition boat, they will lose legislation for an Alternative Vote system, the modest step promised towards more proportional representation.
Fourthly, LibDems might wonder who will vote for them at the next election.
They have no equivalent of those Tory and Labour supporters who would back an orang-utan if it stood for their party. They will not get an anti-government protest vote, their most reliable staple for the past 50 years. They will not get the tactical ‘keep the Tories out’ vote. They might aim for a ‘keep Labour out’ vote, but they are second in many more Tory than Labour seats.
The LibDems, I fear, have miscalculated. The coalition demands more backstairs deals, more ditching of manifesto promises, more MPs reduced to lobby fodder, more politicians speaking in that peculiar strangulated language used to defend policies they once opposed. I do not think this is what voters meant by ‘a new politics’ – or what they thought Clegg meant.
The Institute for Government observed in a report last December that ‘minority government may bring a more open and inclusive decision-making process’. The LibDems could have said they would vote for what made sense and refuse to back what didn’t. They could even, on some subjects, have allowed MPs a free vote after hearing the arguments and listening to public opinion.
No party would have needed to renege on its manifesto promises, only to make open compromises and, from time to time, suffer honourable defeats.
That would have been a new politics. Instead, we have the old politics, worse than ever, with two sides shouting at each other as though they were football supporters on the brink of riot. But we no longer have a third party whose MPs at least appear to be using their brains.
Peter Wilby is a former editor of the New Statesman
