ANALYSIS:NICK CLEGG is depressed that his plan to reform the House of Lords – an institution that has resisted most efforts to change it for 100 years – has failed.
If Clegg is glum, his Conservative partners are incandescent over his decision to block boundary changes to House of Commons seats in retaliation.
The response is justified, he argues, because boundary changes and Lords reform are part of the one package of constitutional reforms agreed in May 2010.
If one side does not keep a bargain, the other is entitled to impose a price, says Clegg, insisting the coalition will, nevertheless, remain in existence.
For voters, the causes of the deep fracture that now exists between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will be mystifying, since boundary changes and Lords reform are seen as esoteric subjects.
However, the hunger for raw power lies at their heart. The Conservatives believe constituencies must be redrawn if they are to have any hope of defeating Labour in 2015.
Under the 2010 boundary review rules
the number of MPs was to be cut from 650
to 600, while all constituencies – with the exception of four islands – would be made more equal in size.
Individual MPs in all parties, particularly the Conservatives, may be glad the changes are now unlikely to go through, since what would be good for their parties may not suit them individually.
However, the majority of Conservatives are beyond fury, because they need a lead of nearly 11 per cent over Labour on existing boundaries to win an outright majority, compared with 7.6 per cent under the proposed reforms.
To illustrate, the John Major-led Conservatives got a majority of 21 in 1992 – a majority that soon became too small to govern – with an 8 per cent lead and a 42 per cent share of the vote. In 2005, by contrast, Labour leader Tony Blair won the third of his victories with just 36 per cent of the vote and a 3 per cent lead over the Conservatives, but still enjoyed a 66-seat majority.
Voting patterns indicate that Labour will become the largest party in 2015 if it comes within four percentage points of the Conservatives.The existing lopsidedness is explained, largely, by the fact that Labour is dominant in inner-city north of England constituencies, where population has fallen significantly over the decades.
The unequal size of constituencies does not explain everything, however, since turnout in many of the Labour heartlands is lower than the UK average.
Conservatives suffer the effects of tactical voting in some marginal seats – particularly in the midlands – where they would otherwise expect to be dominant: the Anybody But Tory vote. Cumulatively, it means Conservatives need to win thousands more votes under first-past-the-post voting rules.
Boundary changes would bring them, they believe, a net gain of 20 seats.
Clegg’s argument that boundary changes – which would cost the Liberal Democrats 15 seats or so – were linked in the coalition agreement to House of Lords reform falls down on the detail.
The agreement between the parties reads: “We will establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of proportional representation. The committee will come forward with a draft motion by December 2010. It is likely that this will advocate single long terms of office.” It said nothing about putting the proposals into law.
Clegg insists the agreement can be read only as a declaration to create an 80 per cent elected chamber over 15 years. For it to mean anything else is nonsense, he says, arguing that coalition agreements would be impossible if they were to be written by lawyers rather than politicians under pressure to form administrations.
However, Conservative leader David Cameron, who favours some change in the Lords but nothing like what Clegg wants, is unable to whip his MPs into line, and unwilling, it seems, to expend the degree of political capital required to prove he had made a convincing effort.
Yesterday, Downing Street insisted boundary changes are not dead.
A boundary commission will report next year and, unless the legislation is changed, a vote on its contents will appear on the House of Commons order paper later in the year.
In last month’s vote on the time to be put aside for the House of Lords legislation, Cameron failed to deliver the required 90-plus of his MPs – the biggest rebellion
of its kind – but delivered his ministers into the voting lobbies alongside the Liberal Democrats. Clegg now says he will not even do that.
The question now is: what happens next? Does Cameron press it to a vote? If not, how can he credibly send legislation supported by the majority of his MPs into the long grass? Will Clegg follow through on his threat to block the boundary changes? If that happens, what does Cameron do then?
The coalition agreement is clear on some things. “The principle of collective responsibility, save where it is explicitly set aside, continues to apply to all government ministers,” it says, adding that decisions of the cabinet are binding on all ministers.
In the meantime, the poison now in the system will see the Conservatives demand concessions in the short term from Cameron, such as deregulation, or a tougher stand on taking back powers from the European Union. Following some bad months, Cameron will have to cede some ground to them.
Visitors to Downing Street often encounter and enjoy Larry, a languorous cat taken from an animal shelter to the corridors of power. Since then, a Twitter doppelganger, Larry the Cat @Number10cat, has passed on musings about “The Boss”.
Yesterday, the doppelganger posted his latest missive: “David Cameron and Nick Clegg have just changed their Facebook relationship status to ‘It’s complicated’.”
Having watched the mood of his “boss” in recent days, the real Larry probably agrees.
Mark Hennessy is London Editor