Britannia Radio

May 10, 2010

Go it alone, Dave

Daily Mail, 10 May 2010

One of the strongest advantages of the British electoral system has always been that it gives voters the opportunity for a clear choice.

‘First past the post’ means the chance to throw the governing party out on its ear. It is a brutally clean break and totally transparent.

By contrast, coalitions mean backstairs deals which are not transparent at all. They mean weak governments held to ransom by tiny political parties. And they mean voters can never make that clean break.

Which is why the manoeuvres to form a coalition between the Tories and the Lib Dems are so dismaying — particularly since the Lib Dems’ non-negotiable condition is to demand proportional representation, thereby cementing coalition government for ever.

Speculation over the weekend about the shape of any such deal has been feverish. But despite utterances by the blushing suitors, the marriage has not yet been consummated — and there is still time to call off the engagement.

David Cameron has set out apparent Tory ‘red lines’ which cannot be crossed on Europe, immigration and defence,while acknowledging areas of agreement on tax, education, climate change and civil liberties. But on the biggest potential deal-breaker — electoral reform — the situation is presently murky.

Any concession on PR would be an absolute betrayal of both party and country, since it would almost certainly mean there could never again be a Conservative government. So never again would voters be presented with a clear electoral choice.

But even if PR is excluded from any deal, far from the ‘change’ promised by Cameron, a Tory/Lib Dem coalition would amount to politics as drearily usual.

For having just spent an entire campaign knocking six bells out of the Lib Dems and shouting from the rooftops that a coalition would mean weak and indecisive government, to form such a coalition now would prove that the Tories’ words meant nothing and that they will say or do anything in order to gain power.

It would also be a dismally fitting climax to an electoral strategy that ultimately failed. For this was Cameron’s election to lose — and he duly lost it.

He was up against the most discredited government for more than three decades, with the country bankrupt, immigration out of control and public administration wrecked by bullying and incompetence in equal measure.

It was an open goal - and yet Cameron missed it, failing to win an overall majority and with his share of the popular vote rising by only a measly three percentage points since 2005.

The Tories became the largest party not because people voted to get them in, but because they voted to get Labour out. The Cameroons failed to offer a clear alternative to Labour.

Convinced that they had to move to the left to shake off their ‘nasty party’ label, they ended up speaking out of both sides of their mouths, confusing everyone about what they actually believed in and creating a lethal impression of slipperiness.

On the doorstep, their big idea of the ‘Big Society’ had all the impact of a whoopee cushion. So Cameron now finds himself not only without an absolute majority, but without even a set of policies which voters positively support.

And now to cap it all, having fought a vague, weak and fuzzy campaign he now proposes to form a vague, weak and fuzzy government. For if he does consummate a union with Nick Clegg, he will cement the belief that the party he leads is no longer conservative, but has turned into the Lib-Demaroons.

After all, even though the Lib Dems are, in many respects, to the left of Labour, the Cameroons decided to woo their voters by lining up behind their favourite causes such as environmentalism and civil liberties. When eyebrows were raised, the Cameroons intimated that once they gained power they would revert to true conservative principles.

So, if they now join forces with the Lib Dems, that reassurance will be shown up as hollow and opportunistic and will confirm the view that the Tories have mutated from a torch through an oak tree to a soggy, orange souffle.

Such unease only deepened on Sunday when the Tories’ education spokesman Michael Gove suggested he would be prepared to give his Cabinet seat to his Lib Dem opposite number David Laws — upon whom he showered praise.

But Gove’s own proposed ‘free schools’ reforms are just about the only truly distinctive policy the Tories have got. The Lib Dems would reportedly emasculate them by reasserting local authority control.

The suggestion that the Cameroons think there is ‘leeway’ in their proposals on schools, tax and green issues suggests that a Tory/Lib Dem alliance would simply destroy what is left of the conservative agenda.

What’s more, Cameron’s pious declaration that defence, immigration and Europe are uncrossable ‘red lines’ raises little more than a horse laugh, since he so conspicuously failed to hold the line against the EU constitution, was too frightened even to mention immigration during the campaign and chose to guarantee spending on the NHS rather than on the country’s defences.

It is no surprise that those in his party who for so long bit their tongues over all this –and whose concern that the strategy of ‘hope and change’ wouldn’t work was so rudely dismissed by the Cameroons — are now breaking ranks.

And it’s fitting that one of their strongest voices is that of Graham Brady, the MP who resigned from the Tory front bench over the party’s refusal to support the grammar schools.

That breach of such a totemic principle –the belief in meritocracy, opportunity and fairness embodied by grammar schools — signalled most clearly of all how badly the Conservative Party had lost its way.

In the country’s current strop against the whole political system, there is a wave of support for a coalition between the Tories and the Lib Dems. But this is a bad mistake born of disillusionment.

The Lib Dems were rejected by more than three-quarters of the population. They have no authority to demand anything.

Furthermore, if Cameron makes a deal with Clegg which collapses in a few months’ time, the Tory leader will have unclothed his party only to be left naked in the bath as the water gurgles down the plughole.

He may well fear that, if — as now seems distinctly possible — Gordon Brown is shortly dumped for a more presentable leader, Clegg will form a coalition with Labour to get the electoral reform he craves.

Indeed, on Sunday, there were signs that Lord Mandelson, at his most Machiavellian, was seeking to engineer just such a deal.

But, in fact, Clegg is in a trap. If he were to keep the reviled Labour Party in power, the voters would surely punish him at the polls. But equally, many who voted for the Lib Dems as a progressive party would be disgusted if they find they may have thus helped propel the Tories into power.

So despite his pivotal kingmaker role, Clegg is actually in a weak position. David Cameron should hold his nerve and take the risk of the Tories governing alone without an overall majority.

If Clegg were to bring him down, he could be painted as acting against the national interest by rocking the boat during a financial crisis.

By showing such courage and decisiveness, Cameron would thus confound the critics who dismiss him as a lightweight.

And he would also have a platform to prove that we do indeed have a conservative Prime Minister after all.