Lib Dems are the real collaborators

The Paul Richards column

When Nick Clegg came to Eastbourne the day before the General Election, I had planned to infiltrate the crowd and ask a simple question: ‘can you guarantee that you won’t form a coalition with the Conservatives this weekend?’ For many Labour supporters in towns like Eastbourne, where tactical voting removed the Conservative MP in favour of the Lib Dem, it was a pressing question. I turned up to the Western Lawns, as the Clegg band wagon rolled into town, but was prevented from asking my prescient question by a degree of stage-management that only New Labour used to be able to muster. I wonder what his answer would have been. A denial, which the tactical situation of his location would have demanded (assuming he had any clue where he was) would have been replayed endlessly back to him. Like all the other pledges the Lib Dems made, from VAT to the NHS, and subsequently ditched in return for their ministerial salaries and perks, it would have been used to highlight his hypocrisy.

‘Collaborators’ is the word of the week, applied of course by John Prescott to those of his former cabinet colleagues who have decided to eschew the House of Lords, writing their memoirs, or the lecture circuit in favour of continuing to press for the things they supported whilst in government. At least no-one is bothering to ask what John Prescott will do with the earnings from his autobiography; a chunk of it went to the ghost-writer Hunter Davies. The really extraordinary act of political collaboration is not Milburn, Hutton etc, but the Liberal Democrats entering the Tory-led coalition. British governments are always coalitions of sorts. Each cabinet is an uneasy alliance of different wings, factions and strands of the governing party. Thatcher had her wets, Blair his Brownites, Brown his Blairites, and Cameron has Iain Duncan Smith. But this coalition is of a different order. For one party to be so wholly subsumed into another, in order to form a governing majority, is unprecedented. When the Liberals joined Callaghan in the Lib-Lab pact, each policy decision and parliamentary vote was the subject of negotiation. This time round, the Tories blow the whistle, and the Lib Dems clamber over the top.

A hundred days is a false milestone for any administration. JFK had the sense to say that he would not have achieved anything within 100 days. But 100 days into this Tory-led government, one thing is clear: that Clegg and Cable have as much influence over this government as Petain or Quisling had over Adolf Hitler. The really interesting thing is that they don’t seem to care. Clegg is prepared to sacrifice almost anything on the altar of ministerial office. There are no yellow lines in the sand, not even electoral reform which Cameron will do all he can to scupper. Much has been made of Cameron’s and Clegg’s constructive relationship, based on their similar upbringing and background. But that is to misunderstand the nature of the English class system. They do not belong to the same social class. Clegg is anchored in the professional classes, Cameron in the lower echelons of the upper classes. The former aspires to the latter, and the latter looks down on the former. That’s why Clegg wants to be Cameron when he grows up, and Cameron is prepared to string him along. It is not a relationship of equals, but instead it is like the hard-up aristocrat who allows boorish bankers to shoot on his land because he needs the cash.

Futurology is an imprecise and risky business when it comes to politics. You would have been hard-pressed to predict Thatcher, Major, Blair or Cameron even 18 months before their elections as party leader. But here’s one prediction I am prepared to make: if the Tories win an outright majority at the next election David Cameron will offer Nick Clegg a seat in the Cabinet, and he will accept it: no longer merely a ‘collaborator’, but a card-carrying member of a Conservative government.