The evening before the government was formed, I walked back from the television tent city on College Green to the House of Commons with a man who was about to become a cabinet minister.
The evening before the government was formed, I walked back from the television tent city on College Green to the House of Commons with a man who was about to become a cabinet minister. Conversation turned, predictably, to the forthcoming coalition. He argued that one of the major advantages of it for the Conservatives was that it would drag the Liberal Democrats rightwards, tipping the balance in the party in favour of its liberal wing and against its social democratic one. His rationale was simple: the reality of government takes politicians to the right. As Margaret Thatcher liked to say, the facts of life are Conservative.
His prediction has been proved right. The Lib Dems are moving to the right at an impressive clip — in their language, their outlook, their instincts and their policies. If there is a hung parliament after the next election, a Liberal–Tory coalition will appear far more natural than a Lib–Lab one.
Take the coalition’s nascent policy on university funding. At the last two elections, the Liberal Democrats’ pledge to abolish tuition fees has been one of their flagship policies. During the last campaign, Nick Clegg would pose with a placard that made this pledge clear. So firm was this apparent principle that the coalition agreement provided for Lib Dems abstaining on any measure on university funding that they disagreed with — one of only three such exemptions in the agreement. But on Tuesday, Vince Cable dumped the party’s pledge to abolish fees, telling the House of Commons that it is ‘simply no longer feasible’.
This has, of course, been the case for some time. But the harder-headed Lib Dems had not been able to convince their more soggy-minded colleagues and membership of this. Before the election, Clegg — aware of how impossible the pledge was to deliver — twice tried to drop it and was twice beaten back. Cable, for his part, has been arguing the case even longer. Back in 1998, he was pushing, internally, for the Lib Dems not to oppose fees. The coalition has finally given them an excuse to win the argument.
There is talk of a Commons rebellion. But a Lib Dem told me this week that he believed it would be far smaller than expected, simply because of the starkness of the facts. The university teaching grant is likely to be cut by at least two thirds and the research grant by about a third. The choice is between letting universities go bankrupt and giving them an alternative source of funding. The only one available is a massively increased private income from students via higher fees.
From the comfort zone of the far opposition benches, the Lib Dems would never have had to confront this problem. They would still be taking the easy, populist position on the issue, fishing for students’ votes, to the frustration of those in the leadership who yearned for the party to be credible.
It would be too simple, though, to think that the coalition has somehow allowed the Liberal Democrat leadership to be true to itself — shaking off the naive instincts of its lefty membership. The Liberal Democrat leadership is also changing: government is making its ministers more right-wing. They are finding out, as Vince Cable put it on Tuesday, that the ‘world is not ideal’. To a party which for a long time appeared to believe that everything could be perfect if we just put an extra penny on income tax, this is quite a revelation.
Tony Blair’s autobiography, A Journey, recounts how centre-left politicians are propelled to the right by the realities of office. In the case of Liberal Democrat ministers, this process has been catalysed by the fiscal crisis. Lib Dem ministers haven’t just been mugged by reality, they have been violently assaulted by it. And their world hasn’t been the same since.
Clegg may boast that this is somehow a reverse takeover, and that coalition is realising the inner liberal in his Tory colleagues. But what is more important is how government is pushing him and his colleagues further right than they ever expected to go. They are becoming increasingly natural bedfellows for the Tories. The Lib Dem leadership has already come to an agreement with the Tories on tuition fees and nuclear power, two of the three supposedly unbridgeable gulfs in the coalition agreement. In both cases, it is the Liberal Democrats who have given by far the most ground.
It is also possible to see a resolution to the third issue, marriage — or specifically, a transferable tax allowance for married couples — given how small are the proposed sums involved. If the coalition partners can agree on that, then Cameron and Clegg may well have put together a union that no issue shall put asunder.
Politics is changing, and at an incredible rate. Political journeys that normally would take years are happening in months. It is highly unlikely that in May Cable would have imagined that he’d be proposing allowing universities to charge up to £7,000 a year in fees. But that’s what he was doing on Tuesday. In ordinary times, this change might have taken five years, or longer, to come about. The fiscal crisis has accelerated political processes.
Another example of how government is pushing the Liberal Democrats rightwards is offered by Danny Alexander, who replaced David Laws as Chief Secretary to the Treasury at the end of May. Alexander, a man who was previously not known for any economic views, has now become the government’s chief deficit hawk.
This is, admittedly, a product of the job that he is doing — he has access to the unedited government accounts, and the various horrors they entail. (Alistair Darling once joked that it was almost enough to turn his eyebrows grey.) Clegg has been heard to complain that his former chief of staff’s brain has been taken over by Treasury officials. But it is hard to imagine that even back in opposition, Alexander will ever fully forget the importance of keeping the government’s books in balance.
In next week’s spending review, every Lib Dem minister will have to sign up to — and then defend — cuts that they would prefer not to make. This will complete the crossing of the Rubicon that they embarked on when they decided to go into government. Never again will they be able to oppose with the purity and conviction that they did in the past. The Tories may have had their outlook moderated by coalition. But it is Lib Dems who have been changed for ever by it.
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