How a properly ‘proalition’ coalition should work

Have you noticed, recently, that the Coalition has changed the way it behaves in public? Two years ago, had Nick Clegg dropped his support for major Home Office legislation, spoken out about his own opinion on drugs policy and taken such a different position on a proposed dramatic change to the way newspapers are regulated within the space of a month, journalists would have gone into meltdown. Remember that in the early days of the Coalition, Simon Hughes saying he wasn’t sure about something the Prime Minister had announced was enough to hold the front page. Now we’re seeing differentiation on policies every day.

Today Nick Clegg said he wasn’t convinced that the war on drugs was working, and because of that, ‘yes of course we should do the good work that we are doing as a coalition government, but we should also be open-minded enough to look at whatever alternative approaches help us help those children more effectively in the future’.

The Prime Minister’s spokeswoman made clear this morning that the Prime Minister’s view that current drugs policy is working just fine is the policy of the government, and Clegg is just expressing a personal view.