How, and when, does the Coalition end?
How does the Coalition end? It is a frequent topic of conversation amongst Tories and Lib Dems at all levels. If you believe the Lib Dems need to be “equidistant” from both main parties in the general election (and most Lib Dem MPs do) then how do you pull that off if you sit in government with the Tories and you are led by Nick Clegg right up to the election wire? It just won’t work like that, some Lib Dems say.
In “The Coalition and the Constitution”, Vernon Bogdanor (David Cameron’s politics tutor at Oxford) points out “a little-noticed corollary of the Liberal Democrat argument for a principled coalition of co-operation (i.e. joining a coalition for the good of the nation not because you are aligned with one party or another) is that the party should leave the coalition some time before the next general election in order to re-establish an independent identity and the freedom of action needed to choose between the major parties”.
“Little-noticed” it may be, but it has been clocked by the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, I am told. Some time ago he asked for civil servants to take another look at the original files drafted ahead of the 2010 general election. In those papers there were scenarios outlined for minority government, full coalition and “confidence and supply,” a downgrade from coalition, more like the Lib-Lab pact that David Steel and Jim Callaghan operated between 1977-78. Sir Gus, I’m told, wants to make sure that, though it might be some time off, civil servants are prepared for the Lib Dems downgrading cooperation to something way short of a coalition before 2015.
That doesn’t mean it’ll happen, of course. But chat for a while to a Lib Dem MP and you soon discover these thoughts are bobbing around and they imply high level personnel changes. One Lib Dem minister said to me today that he believed for equidistance to have any credibility, there would have to be changes in the top-rank Lib Dem team “all the way to the top” before the next general election.