When one half of a couple threatens to walk out if he doesn’t get his way and the other responds by threatening to call in the lawyers, it’s obvious that all is not well.
When one half of a couple threatens to walk out if he doesn’t get his way and the other responds by threatening to call in the lawyers, it’s obvious that all is not well. But this is the state of the coalition at the moment. The row between the two parties over Andrew Lansley’s proposed reforms to the National Health Service is in danger of turning into an argument that neither side ever forgets — or forgives.
It was Sunday lunchtime when this row went fully public. Norman Lamb, Nick Clegg’s chief parliamentary and political adviser, went on television and announced that he would resign if substantial changes were not made to the coalition’s Health and Social Care Bill. It was a spectacular intervention and one that the Tories suspected must have been made with Clegg’s prior knowledge.
Inside No. 10 there was furious muttering that this was an underhand plot to ensure that the Liberal Democrats could present changes to the bill as a victory over the Tories. The Cameroons, who know that Cameron’s status as a different kind of Tory is built around his respect for the NHS, are acutely sensitive about any hint of a suggestion that the Prime Minister is just another Tory who hates socialised medicine.
Lansley’s Department of Health responded by reminding the Liberal Democrats that their interference could open the whole process up to judicial review. If the fundamental principles of the bill are changed after it has passed through the committee stage in the House of Commons, there’s a risk that a review could be granted on the grounds of a lack of parliamentary scrutiny. It is thought, however, that the Department of Health is only saying this to make sure that the Liberal Democrats express their support for the fundamentals of the bill.
Calmer voices among the Liberal Democrats are trying to dampen down the row. They claim that Clegg didn’t know that Lamb was going to threaten to resign and that the needle between Lamb and Lansley is more personal than political.
Before the election, Lamb, like Lansley, shadowed health. The pair fell out in a particularly unpleasant way over the breakdown in 2010 of all-party discussions on how to fund a national social care service. Lamb sided with Labour’s Andy Burnham and had several heated public exchanges with Lansley over who was to blame for the talks collapsing. The Tories were so suspicious of Lamb, in fact, that one enterprising researcher followed him around the Commons trying to eavesdrop on his conversations with Burnham.
Many of Lamb’s friends think that Lansley blocked him from being made minister of state at the Department of Health. This is untrue. What really happened was that, in the chaos of the first days of coalition, Lamb was forgotten by the Liberal Democrats as the ministerial posts were doled out. Rather late in the day, he was offered the job of assistant whip and the rather grandiose title of chief parliamentary and political adviser to Clegg.
The health spat is just one example of the growing tensions between the coalition partners. Tories complain that Lib Dem junior ministers have started giving interviews without telling their departmental bosses first. Even within No. 10, where coalition relations remain more cordial than out in the departments, there is irritation at just how much Lib Dem leaking there has been recently. Then there is the referendum on the alternative vote, with the two parties on opposite sides of an increasingly ugly campaign. The Liberal Democrats, angered by how the Tory-funded No campaign has been attacking Nick Clegg, are happy with the Yes campaign promoting a vote for AV as the best way to keep those nasty Tories out.
There are some exceptions to this rule of deteriorating relations. George Osborne and Vince Cable, who used to loathe each other, are getting on far better. Cable has even told friends that he finds the Chancellor easier to work with and more personable than the Prime Minister. This week’s report of the Vickers Review on banking, long expected to be a flashpoint in the Osborne-Cable relationship, passed off without incident.
But for the first time senior figures are willing to discuss fundamental changes to the nature of the coalition. One remarks that a political bailout of Clegg if AV is defeated and the Lib Dems suffer bad losses in the May elections would be as ineffectual as the Eurozone bailouts, because it would not deal with the fundamental problem. Yes, Cameron could offer Clegg some big policy concessions in May to help tide him over. But the whole exercise would then have to be repeated the next time the deputy prime minister found himself under pressure from his party.
No one is sure what the answer to this problem is. A looser coalition arrangement that allows backbench Liberal Democrats more freedom to vote against the government, an obvious solution, is probably too dramatic a step.
Another worry in Tory circles is the Liberal Democrat desire to move on to House of Lords reform this autumn if the AV referendum is lost. Reforming the upper house will take up huge amounts of parliamentary time; their lordships will spend months debating their own future, and slow down all the rest of the government’s legislation. Obsessing over the issue while the cuts bite will make the coalition look out of touch. As one says despairingly, ‘I don’t mind the Lib Dems putting their interests before anything else, but they don’t even know where their interests lie. There’s not even one vote in Lords reform.’
The real danger to the coalition is that on an individual level members are increasingly wary of each other. People are not being straight with each other, because they fear whatever information they impart turning up in the newspapers the next day.
The challenge for the coalition partners is whether, once the AV referendum and the elections have taken place, they can return to the happy, faithful mood of last year. Can they restore trust as quickly as it has been eroded these past few weeks? If they can’t, the public will turn against a divided — and weakened — government.
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