Nick Clegg and David Cameron. Photo credit: Crown copyright
The background
The coalition government is under increasing strain after a week of public spats between senior Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
After a Tory backbench revolt put Lib Dem-backed Lords reform in jeopardy, Sir Menzies Campbell told the BBC that his party may not support Conservative plans to redraw parliamentary boundaries.
Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Conservative backbench committee, predicted the coalition would not last until the general election in 2015, reported The Telegraph.
The pressure is now on David Cameron and Nick Clegg to present a united front. But given the scale of recent antagonism, just how long can the coalition last?
Read more about the Lords reform rebellion at The Periscope Post.
Telegraph: Lib Dems ‘political blackmail’
The Lib Dems “have long been masters at cloaking political opportunism in the garb of high principle”, said a Telegraph editorial. The party is now effectively blackmailing their coalition partners: “If the Tories fail to deliver Lords reform this autumn, the Lib Dems will scupper reform of the Commons.” According to the editorial, the Liberal Democrats are quite wrong to link the two issues: “The Coalition Agreement quite clearly linked the parliamentary boundary changes not with Lords reform at all, but with last year’s national referendum on the AV voting system.”
Coalition future is up to Cameron
Disagreements are par for the course in a coalition government, pointed out an Independent editorial. “The problem is that the vast majority have, so far, gone the Conservatives’ way, with only minor concessions in return.” If the Lib Dems vote down the Tories’ planned boundary changes, the government risks descending into “unworkable acrimony”. The future of the coalition now rests with Cameron. “The Liberal Democrats have fulfilled their side of the Rose Garden bargain. The ball is now in Mr Cameron’s court.”
Economic arguments could end coalition
“For all the sound and fury recently about Lords reform, it may well be the economy, in the end, that breaks the coalition,” wrote Jackie Ashley in The Guardian. In the next spending review, the Conservatives will argue for more cuts and tax rises – a prospect that will horrify the Liberal Democrats. This is the “coming storm” for the coalition.
Is the concept of coalition over?
“At the top of the Lib Dems, there’s now a real worry that both Labour and the Tories would try and govern as a minority government after the next election if there’s another hung parliament rather than form a coalition,” wrote James Forsyth at The Spectator’s Coffee House blog. If coalition governments really have fallen out of favour, this would effectively lock the Lib Dems out of power.
