The Rundown Podcast: What Can We Learn From The Coalition?

5 min read3 hr

This month marks 15 years since the signing of the historic Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition agreement, and 10 years since its dissolution, so with today’s fractured five-party politics and predictions of another hung Parliament next time round, this week’s episode of The Rundown looks at what can be learnt from five chaotic days in 2010, that led to five years of surprisingly stable government.

To discuss how it all came together, and what stopped it from falling apart despite predictions the government would flounder, host Alain Tolhurst is joined by one of the people in the room when the historic deal was thrashed out, along with two members of the House of Lords, who in their past lives were at the heart of the Downing Street operation during that period, and a leading professor who studied the coalition period.

David Laws, who was the Lib Dem MP for Yeovil from 2001 to 2015 and an education minister for three years, was part of the team that helped secure the deal which put his party into government with the Tories, explained how they had planned for such a scenario as the polls tightened ahead of the 2010 election.

“We could see ourselves genuinely, this time, ending up in negotiations and possibly in government, so Nick [Clegg] had probably gone further than previous Lib Dem leaders in setting up a shadow negotiating team to think through policies and priorities well before the election, to think through the way in which coalition governments would operate,” he said.

“While we hadn't necessarily thought through every single issue that I would now wish we'd thought through in terms of particularly the presentation of coalition government and how a smaller party gets the credit for what it's doing, we prepared for it pretty seriously, and we were not hugely surprised that a hung parliament was delivered.

“If anything, we were slightly disappointed that the election didn't deliver us quite as many seats as we'd hoped for, and as at one stage, the ‘Cleggmania’ around the TV debates hinted was possible.”

Lord Jonny Oates, a Lib Dem peer, was chief of staff for Nick Clegg during his time as deputy prime minister, agreed his party did not do enough to show to their supporters why they were going into partnership with the Conservaives, and what they would get out of it, that ultimately led to their collapse at the following election.

He said that communications had not been part of their negotiating strategy, and that he and his counterpart for the Tories, Andy Coulson, agreed on which sandwiches were served at the talks between the two sides, as they had nothing else to tell the media while the days elapsed with no deal being struck.

“In retrospect, of course, we should have thought through the comms of that more, it's such a massive issue about how you present the smaller party in the coalition,” Oates added.

"This is a problem all around the world, and it still drives me absolutely to distraction when I hear Conservatives going unchallenged on broadcast talking about policies that were enacted under the coalition, which they had resisted and which had been in the Lib Dem manifesto and not theirs, and cheerfully claiming them!”

David Cameron Nick Clegg — David Cameron and Nick Clegg governed together between 2010 and 2015 (Alamy)

Baroness Kate Fall had begun working for David Cameron after he became party leader in 2005, and when he entered Downing Street she worked as deputy chief of staff inside Number 10 for the next six years, and said the coalition held together despite the political differences because if a commitment to put major decisions through the so-called ‘quad’, made up of the PM, his deputy, chancellor George Osborne and his Lib Dem number two in the Treasury, Danny Alexander.

She said that although any future arrangement between different parties will have to agree on policy, they should start with the people involved and see if they can craft working relationships.

“Those relationships are so important, and often people don't talk enough about the importance of whether, do you actually, do get on, do you trust each other, it's a really important part of it,” Fall said.

Cameron ended up winning a majority at the 2015 election, largely thanks to taking dozens of seats from the Lib Dems who helped prop him up for five years, but Fall argued while both sides are “aware of the politics” especially towards the end of the Parliament, the Tories were not working against their coalition partners even as polling day loomed.

However Robert Hazell, Professor of Government and the Constitution at University College London, and co-author of the book The Politics of Coalition, said it is an “ironclad” rule that the junior partner in any such arrangement pays for it in the following electoral cycle, which might be off-putting to any smaller parties tempted into a deal next time round.

But Laws said despite it nearly leading to his party’s extinction in 2015, including him losing his own seat, he has no regrets about going into government.

“I would do it again because I think that politics is, or should be, about delivering things that you believe in and trying to make the country a better place through government,” he said.

“And therefore it's wrong simply to prioritise political strength and think of that as an end in itself. Occasionally, you do have to take risks in order to achieve the things in government you want.”

The Rundown is presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot