The political parties are gathering for their conferences in a time of deep uncertainty, with both the coalition and Labour feeling their way
This year’s party conferences take place in the most unusual of circumstances.We have the first peace-time coalition government in 80 years. Labour does not, yet, have a leader. And the conferences are happening in the long shadow of the Spending Review and the fiscal crisis.
All this creates a level of uncertainty in the three main parties. No-one knows where the ‘new politics’ is taking us.
The governing parties are still adjusting to the idea of coalition. After the first flush of romance, they are waking up to the realities of trying to balance their competing interests, both between and within their own parties. Maintaining an independent profile is a much bigger problem for the Liberal Democrats than the Conservatives, and the longer the coalition goes on the harder this will get.
It doesn’t help that our system of government imposes a degree of unity on the coalition that would be unheard of in countries more used to multi-party rule. We have collective Cabinet responsibility, Royal Prerogative Powers and a civil service loyal and accountable only to the ‘government of the day’.
Our system is simply not designed for coalitions, other than in wartime.
The coalition agreement itself was, at the time, seen as being fairly broad and detailed. But it has rapidly become clear that there is a vast area of government that it does not cover and where the ‘lines to take’ have still to be worked out.
There is little sign that the two parties have worked out a coherent way of allowing themselves to ‘agree to differ’, as coalition parties do in other countries.
As time goes on, the trend is clearly towards ‘agreeing to agree’ on almost every policy issue, and even to make a virtue of necessity and claim that they really do agree on everything, except a few ‘big’ issues – voting reform being the most obvious. But it is the exception that proves the rule that the coalition is mutating towards a policy, if not organisational, merger between the two parties.
For Nick Clegg’s LibDems this is a big problem. Some of them might even want to give the more radical Tory ministers their head in the hope that they will fall flat on their faces. But how to capitalise on that when you are bound by collective Cabinet responsibility?
What of Labour? The prolonged leadership campaign was meant to be a ‘renewal’ debate that would settle the party’s strategy for the future. Instead, the waters appear even more muddied now and, whoever wins, it is unclear what direction the party will go in.
In a sense Labour is suffering from not having lost badly enough. It wasn’t cremated at the polls and is within theoretical striking distance of regaining power. The party confidently expects the coalition to become rapidly unpopular and assumes it will be the beneficiary.
The impetus for a radical rethink simply isn’t there.
Both Labour (openly) and the Conservatives (secretly) seem to be operating on the assumption that two-party government is an aberration.
For Prime Minister David Cameron it is a welcome opportunity to pull his party more to the centre ground and reinforce the switch to a more socially liberal outlook. The LibDems provide a useful lightning rod for popular anger and a counter-weight to his own Right wing, which can either be dispensed with or will implode in due course.
For Labour, the assumption is that the LibDems will collapse, it will be the main beneficiary, and we will soon be back to a straight two-party contest for exclusive power.
What neither has envisaged is that the LibDems could partially collapse but that we will not go back to two-party politics. The historic trend is away from the two main parties, not just to the LibDems but to nationalist and fringe parties or none.
Who knows what the next four and a half years of the Cuts Coalition will provoke in terms of political reaction? We really are in uncharted territory.
But my guess is we won’t have to wait four and a half years – by next summer it will be pretty clear where we are going, and that might well include going back to the polls earlier than we expect.
Colin Talbot is professor of public policy and management at Manchester Business School
