Politics: The rose garden romance is well and truly over

A little under a year ago, David Cameron held a party at Downing Street to thank all of those who had helped the Tory general election campaign.

A little under a year ago, David Cameron held a party at Downing Street to thank all of those who had helped the Tory general election campaign. It was a bittersweet occasion: although Cameron was Prime Minister, the Tories had failed to win a majority. In his speech, Cameron told them that coalition was actually better than a small Tory majority. For the people who had worked tirelessly for the election of a Tory government, these words left a sour taste. But in those heady, early months of the coalition, with the scent of the rose garden hanging in the Downing Street air, most observers could see what Cameron meant. The coalition was planning to address the deficit, free schools from local authority control and fundamentally reform welfare. Crucially, the Liberal Democrats were acting not as a brake against this radicalism but as a catalyst for it.

A year on, Cameron would not make the same speech. Over the past 12 months, he and his circle have begun to see the pitfalls of coalition. They have realised the extent to which sharing power prevents them from dealing with the country’s problems. Now, their aim above all else is to win the next election outright and dump the Lib Dems.

In the coalition’s first few months, the normal laws of politics seemed to have been suspended. At the centre of government, Tories and Liberal Democrats worked seamlessly together. They gushed about how they believed in the same things, but gave them different names. The two parties even held joint political cabinets together. For one meeting they travelled out on a minibus to Chequers to discuss how best to scupper Labour.