The Cameron-Clegg alliance is working – the challenge is to keep the momentum going, writes MARK HENNESSY
SOME POLITICIANS perform retreats better than others. On Tuesday, David Cameron, standing at a lectern in his office at No 10 Downing Street, unceremoniously threw away much of his government’s criminal justice plans with some style.
Dressing up his withdrawal, Cameron uttered some superbly crafted language; saying that voters were less worried about U-turns than the media believed and that they preferred someone to have the courage to pull back if they were heading in the wrong direction.
However, it was still a retreat. Under the changes, Cameron has abandoned plans to cut prison numbers in England and Wales – plans that had been designed to deal with the accelerating cost of prison, but also with its failures to reform inmates.
The issue had become toxic for Conservative MPs left petrified that a determined campaign by The Sun and The Daily Mail – food for thought for those who believe newspaper campaigns are a thing of the past – had already damaged them.
Indeed, it had; though it is doubtful if the changes – complete with a series of get-tough promises that will, most likely, wither away – will repair the damage, particularly since crime is likely to rise as a public concern.
In Opposition, Cameron had sought to move away from the Conservatives’ traditional draconian stand on crime, believing that he needed, as the phrase put it, to “detoxify” the party’s image as the home of the nasty and the privileged.
Though he never actually used the words “hug a hoodie”, Cameron focused on the influences that led youths to commit crime in the first place in a reworking of Tony Blair’s “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” language.
One year in power, the Conservative-Liberal Democrats coalition is benefiting from Labour leader, Ed Miliband’s failure to establish himself and from Labour’s refusal to distance itself from the sins of its past. But these are still early days.
Next week, a number of public sector unions representing teachers, firemen and hospital staff, are to strike in protest at cuts to pensions, offering a possibility that the UK is heading for a summer of real discontent.
However, this is not 1979. Union membership has fallen drastically, while the majority of private workers have long since lost, or never had, the defined benefit pensions held by those in the public service.
So far, Cameron and other senior figures are making all the right noises, saying pensions must be reformed; the pension age must be delayed, but, equally, they believe that wider public support for strikes is limited.
However, the economy is everything. Chancellor George Osborne has a political strategy that is so simple it could be written on the back of a cigarette box: cut spending now, fix the deficit, followed by tax cuts, or the credible promise of such, before the next election.
Just because it is simple, however, does not mean that it can be achieved. Economic growth figures remain anaemic and far shy of what Osborne needs, while the crisis surrounding the euro could easily cause havoc in the City.
Criminal justice has not been the government’s only retreat, since it backed away earlier from a daft plan to sell off forests, along with its more recent withdrawal on some of the reforms of the National Health Service in England and Wales.
Some of the retreats are evidence, however, that Cameron is getting a grip on office in a way he did not immediately realise he had to on arrival in Downing Street, when he wanted to be a chairman, rather than as a deeply engaged chief executive.
That has now changed. No 10’s team has been expanded, even if the youth of many astounds those having to deal with them; while Cameron is becoming more intrusive in his dealings with his ministers, which will cause its own issues.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats must pray for better days, though the decision to back tuition fees has created a toxicity around their brand that is unlikely to diminish no matter how long an election takes to come around. This week, Nick Clegg moved to change the narrative, suggesting that 50 million people should get free RBS and Lloyds shares once those banks are put fully back into the private sector – a variation on Margaret Thatcher’s dream of share-ownership by the masses.
However, the idea, if it comes off, will not happen quickly.
Meanwhile, he is seen as the betrayer of students and obsessed with constitutional reforms of the voting system and the House of Lords that little interest the public.
Despite all of the problems, the Conservatives, even if most of them would prefer not to be in coalition, and the Liberal Democrats have received little upside from their biggest success: the alliance works.
Following detailed interviews with scores of Whitehall players, University College London Constitution Unit recently reported that despite occasional public ructions close working relations have been created.
“People feared that coalition government would be weak, quarrelsome and divided,” said Prof Robert Hazell. “But in the first year the coalition has been remarkably stable and united.
“Everyone we interviewed in Whitehall says how much more harmonious the coalition is compared with the rivalries and infighting of the Blair-Brown years,” he said. The challenge now will be to keep that going.