New Best Friends

Ever since the announcement about the new coalition government the papers have been fawning over Britain’s newest power couple. Most of the media are hailing the coalition as a huge success, and are confident it will remain intact, though most agree there will be some scrapes along the way.

I’m not so sure. There has been huge uproar from both parties’ activists over the arrangement. The Tory Right are fuming that so many concessions have been given to the Liberal Democrats: Not much remains of the Conservative manifesto. Similarly most Liberal Democrats are furious at Clegg cosying up to Cameron. I know of many who have said they will not vote for the party again and it will cause an exodus into the arms of Labour and the Greens. Clegg may have secured a massive amount of concessions from the Tories but most Lib Dems still think of the Tories as their natural enemies – forming a government with them is unthinkable.

So what are going to be the policies of this new government then? Well one of the first things to be announced by the coalition was fixed 5 year Parliaments, which was never discussed by the Tories or indeed any party that I know of in the run up to the election. It is a blatant attempt to hold on to power for a full 5 year term rather than face the possibility of being cast out again in another election that might have happened next year. This means that the multitude of voters who are unsatisfied with the current coalition government (which I think is fair to say no one even imagined let alone voted for) then they will not be given the right to vote again for another 5 years. I imagine this coalition being fairly rocky after the honeymoon period has worn off and already anticipate a Labour victory at the next election as voters abandon the Tories and Liberal Democrats.

The other big policy which has already been enacted is the scrapping of the planned third runway for Heathrow. They have also ruled out runways at Stansted and Gatwick. A new airport in the Thames Estuary, favoured by Mayor Boris Johnson, is not being considered at the moment either. The “green” argument for this is absurd. The aircraft will simply use other European airports that are big enough to take them. These aircraft bring a lot of revenue to the country. A third runway is estimated to bring in an extra 220,000 flights and £9bn to the UK economy. At a time when the economy needs everything it can get it seems madness to rule it out straight away without any sort of discussion.

A summary of some of the coalition’s policies are:

Tax Rises Despite a major focus of their campaign being the scrapping of the proposed rise in National Insurance contributions and cutting the deficit through spending cuts, the Tories have conceded a tax rise to the Liberal Democrats. Capital Gains Tax will be increased from 18% to a maximum of 40%. This will affect many traditional Tory voters.

Reform Of The Lords A committee will be set up to examine a wholly or partially elected House of Lords. I have already discussed the danger in reforming the Lords so I will not repeat myself. But I will say that although it was in the original Conservative manifesto I do not imagine that it will be that popular amongst traditional Tories. Labour has already taken a wrecking ball to our constitution and The Tories seem to want to knock down the remnants.

The EU This should be a highly contentious issue for the coalition, after all the Conservatives are meant to be Eurosceptic and the Liberal Democrats have always been Eurofanatic. But the coalition deal promises Britain will be a “positive partner”, which hardly seems to add up to Cameron’s promise of seizing back powers from Brussels. But then Cameron has broken his promises on Europe in the past and his façade as a Eurosceptic has been broken. In truth he is very much in favour of our membership of the EU and this could be an issue that splits the Tories.

Voting System This was the key concession to the Lib Dems, a referendum on the Alternative Vote system. The parties have agreed to allow each other to campaign for or against a change to AV. However this has still angered many Tories, particularly the right wing of the party. Many believe a change to AV will keep the Tories out of power for a generation so to concede a referendum on the issue is unforgivable for many.

ID Cards This will be one of the few popular policies, the scrapping of the planned ID cards.

Defence The main policy announced is that Britain will keep Trident though the Lib Dems have been allowed to look into cost-cutting measures. The big question for me is whether the Tories will continue their previous policy to scrap the 2 new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy and the Joint Strike Fighters for the Royal Air Force that will fly from them. Despite what our politicians would have us believe Britain is still a major world power with one of the best navies in the world, albeit much smaller after the savage reduction in numbers made by Labour. The new aircraft carriers are essential to maintaining and indeed extending Britain’s capability to project air power on the other side of the world at a moment’s notice.

Most of these policies concern me and I think will concern many Tory voters. I debated with myself for a long time whether to vote Conservative or not in this election. The outcome has made me glad I did not and I find myself in the surreal position of wishing that Labour had won this election, or at least formed a coalition government with the Lib Dems. At least then Cameron’s head would have been demanded and a new, real conservative would have been able to move the party away from the centre ground it currently occupies back to traditional conservatism.

Clegg The Kingmaker

As was predicted this has been a tight election and no party has gained an overall majority. The Conservatives secured the most votes but will be disappointed nonetheless, despite their talks of success, given the party’s high approval rating even a few months back.

However there have been some surprising results. Labour has been criticised for performing badly but personally I think this is a huge success story for Labour, bearing in mind that last year the Conservatives were miles ahead in the polls and some pundits were claiming that we could see Labour lose power for a generation. Instead, although 48 seats behind the Conservatives, they have a chance of clinging on to power if they can make a deal with the Liberal Democrats, which has already been dubbed a “Coalition of Losers”.

The other big surprise was a loss in votes for the Liberal Democrats despite a recent surge in the polls. Nevertheless because of the Conservatives failure to win an outright majority they have turned out to be the kingmakers in this election. Nick Clegg now has a difficult choice of who to support to form a government.

David Cameron has been trying to woo Nick Clegg much to the dismay of many members of the Conservative Party. A Conservative-Lib Dem coalition seems to be the option the media thinks most likely. However I’d be amazed if an agreement was reached. The key issue the Lib Dems would want in a coalition is a referendum on the voting system, but  the Conservatives would never allow that given that it favours both Labour and the Lib Dems. On other key issues like Europe there are vast differences between the parties and it would show how desperate Cameron is for power if he sacrifices some of his party’s key issues to the Lib Dems. Nick Clegg for his part would alienate many of his own voters who are anti-Conservative.

Clegg would have problems if he supported the Labour Party as well. After all his talk of change he will not want to be seen to be propping up a failed and unpopular government. However the party is much more in tune with the Lib Dems and have already spent the best part of a day promising the Lib Dems a referendum on the Proportional Representation system they so desperately want.

So I believe the most likely result is that talks fail between Cameron and Clegg and they turn instead to the Labour party for a coalition. This would most likely come with a demand for Brown’s resignation so that they can justify it as “change”. But this would leave us with a second consecutive unelected Labour Prime Minister.

We are going to see an interesting couple of days, with the media speculating on what’s going on in the Leaders’ private talks. Voters will have to wait at least a few days if not weeks before they know whether it will be a Labour or Conservative coalition running the country. Either way, any deal will likely prove unstable and we could see another election before the end of the year.