The Coalition's Progress

The coalition came to power promising a new politics; a common enough aspiration, and it is easy enough to understand why the Con-Dems would want to distinguish themselves from the completely compromised failure that was the Brown administration. But, as Obama has so clearly demonstrated in the US, it is far easier to talk about change in politics than to actually implement it. So how have the Con-Dems got on thus far?

In terms of spending cuts, they’ve obviously made a start – although the caveat about a reduction in future spending not being the same as an actual cut in spending is ever present and ever relevant. However, where the Con-Dems have completely failed is in the battle to dominate the discourse when it comes to spending “cuts”. Rather than making the case for spending cuts, and thus reducing the size of the state, they have treated cuts as something nasty that they are being forced to do. A bit of empty, half-hearted rhetoric about the Big Society is not enough to make the case for a smaller state and a freer, but more responsible, populace. Plus, the Con-Dems have completely failed to punish Labour enough for making these cuts inevitable. Every time Ed Miliband opens his stupid mouth to spout spurious nonsense about the “cuts”, the coalition should be responding with “well you and your party caused them!” There is an opportunity here to keep Labour out of power for a generation, but that will only happen if people truly understand the cost of Labour’s incompetence during their thirteen years of misrule.

The coalition has also made a small start with civil liberties. It is great that the ID card scheme has been scrapped, but that is simply a reversal of one of Labour’s most egregious attacks on our civil liberties. It is not the start of a genuine move towards a freer society in any meaningful way. And the much vaunted commitment to civil liberties from the coalition is not materialising in terms of practical politics. The state can still spy on us to a massive extent; landlords are not allowed to decide whether to allow smoking on their premises or not; protest is still draconically policed; we are all still “nudged” towards the sort of behaviour the state wants from us. If there is a distinction between the coalition and the last Labour government, then it is in a commitment to paternalism rather than overt coercion. Thus, we’re in a better state of affairs than we were under Blair and Brown, but there is still a hell of a long way to go.

The area where the coalition has had its most success is in maintaining what is a fragile and unlikely union between two different parties. Sure, there have been grumblings – particularly from the Lib Dem contingent, but generally speaking the coalition has defied cynics and managed to hold itself together, even through deeply divisive issues such as the rise in tuition fees. It is well within the realms of reality to now predict that the coalition will serve a full five years in office – something that, on paper, never really appeared possible even in the first flush of the new political union last May.

But this is somewhat depressing; the most effective the coalition has been, according to this analysis, is in clinging onto the reigns of power. In other words, by acting for itself. The self-interest that has dominated so much of recent political history is present and correct in the “new politics”, rather sadly. And the progress of the coalition thus has not been impressive; at the moment, the very best that they can claim is that they haven’t been as bad as Labour. But if they genuinely what to do something new, and create a decisive break with the past, then they have to spell out a decisive vision for a smaller state and at the same time turn their rhetoric in civil liberties into something meaningful and practical. Forget the Big Society; the coalition can be genuinely ground-breaking if it speeds up the pace of change and gives us a free society instead of the status quo.