James Forsyth’s Mail on Sunday column is my first read every Sunday, and it’s choc full of details as ever. Here is his account of the Liberal Democrat reaction to last week’s House of Lords defeat:
On Thursday morning, Nick Clegg and David Cameron agreed a new phase of the Coalition after what one No 10 insider called ‘the Coalition’s Cuban missile crisis’. Tensions were so high amid the vote on Lords reform that some feared the Coalition would implode, but things have now begun to ease. Both sides stress ‘this isn’t back to the rose garden’, and what is needed is not ‘an idealised romance but cold, hard purpose’. In this spirit, Cameron has indicated that if the Lib Dems do not get elected peers, he won’t punish them for rebelling over electoral boundary changes. However, both sides now talk in terms of getting through the next two years – implying the Coalition will end in 2014.
Not back to the rose garden, say the Lib Dems. Coalition with a cold, hard purpose. This is exactly what they said after the AV referendum: that the romance was over, and it’s time for a harder coalition. This is the only card they have left to play, because they certainly won’t bring down the government. I’m rather suspicious of Tories who, when explaining the government’s lamentable absence of decent reforms, blame the Lib Dems and make out as if they are political hostages. The Lib Dems do not have a gun to the Tories’ heads. Turkeys don’t vote for an early Christmas and if today’s polls were tomorrow’s elections two in every three Lib Dem MPs would be – ahem – liberated into the private sector including the MP representing the University of Sheffield Hallam. The post-Westminster careers of Mark Oaten (now the fur trade’s chief lobbyist) Lembit Opik (miming pop videos) or Evan Harris (still popping up on TV) collectively serve as reasons for the Lib Dems not to wish for that early election.
If there is a lesson from the Lords vote, it’s this: the Lib Dems have just 8 per cent of the seats in parliament and about 10 per cent of the current popular support. Cameron ought to remember this when deciding the balance of power within government. I can see why the Lib Dems want to act as if they are a virus in the Tory supercomputer: at election time they want to boast about evil Tory ideas that they have stopped. But we need the Tories to be imaginative. As any Labour MP will tell you, decent policies take at least two to three years to have any effect in the real world. This summer is the last chance that Cameron (or, more importantly, Osborne) will have to hatch a plan that will demonstrably change Britain for the better and lead to electoral dividends. For every Lib Dem supporter in Britain there are three Tory supporters, and the Tories have five times as many MPs. If Cameron has allowedhis government to be slowed down by Lib Dem oppositionalism, then it’s his fault – not theirs.
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