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26 April, 2016<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"\/standpoint\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/files_u28_books_wiseman_3.jpg\" "\\"Feature")
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David Laws: Thorough and thoughtful (\u00a9ALEX FOLKES\/FISHNIK.COM CC BY-ND 2.0)
<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nRemember the Liberal Democrats? Not so long ago they were in government. Now there are just eight of them in the House of Commons. The rout that ousted 49 MPs was a conclusive judgment on the party\u2019s five years in government, ruthlessly delivered by the electorate. As a result, the party\u2019s decision to enter into coalition in 2010 is almost universally seen to have been disastrous for the party. Meanwhile, the achievements and shortcomings of the last government are, for better or for worse, seen as Conservative ones.<\/p>\n
A year on from electoral meltdown, David Laws, former MP for Yeovil, has produced Coalition<\/em>, an honest, thorough and thoughtful account of\u00a0 life at the heart of the last government, and an attempt to write his party back into British political history. <\/p>\n
Laws\u2019s defence of his party\u2019s time in government is fought on two fronts. On one side, he is writing to win round left-wing Liberal Democrat supporters still angry at the decision to work with the Conservatives. The book\u2019s epigraph is from Machiavelli: \u201cThe Prince who walks away from power walks away from the power to do good.\u201d On the other, Coalition<\/em> is a pitch to the country at large, demanding more credit for the work of the last government.<\/p>\n
For Laws, the month of May 2010 began with the excitement of coalition negotiations and being made Chief Secretary to the Treasury. It ended in scandal after the Daily Telegraph<\/em> revealed he had been using parliamentary expenses to pay rent to his partner \u2014 a clear breach of the rules. In Coalition, Laws says, somewhat naively, that \u201cas the effect of my actions was to reduce my claims upon the taxpayer, I did not consider it at the time to be wrong\u201d. In part the mistake arose because of his decision to keep his sexuality private \u201cfrom my family, friends and colleagues\u201d. He concludes: \u201cThere seemed no good moment to come out.\u201d <\/p>\n
But resignation did not mean wilderness. Laws remained a close ally and confidant of Nick Clegg \u2014 if not at the heart of the coalition, then at the centre of one of the parties in government. (Much of the detail that makes Coalition<\/em> such a compelling account of the last government comes from access to diaries kept by\u00a0 Clegg, a debt which Laws acknowledges.) In 2012 he returned to government, simultaneously serving as Minister of State for Schools and a minister in the Cabinet Office, close to Clegg. <\/p>\n
The question that looms over Coalition<\/em> is \u201cWhere did it all go wrong?\u201d For the Liberal Democrats, coalition was always a gamble. And, by most measures of political success, the gamble did not pay off. <\/p>\n
Ever since the late 1990s, when Paddy Ashdown came close to a deal that would have put Liberal Democrats in Tony Blair\u2019s cabinet, senior Liberal Democrats were under no illusions that, whoever they shared power with, coalition \u2014 the only realistic way for a party of their size to do anything \u2014 would not go down well with their supporters. In a 1998 memo to Ashdown, Chris (now Lord) Rennard warned: \u201cThe loss of our independence and acceptance of collective responsibility will hit us hard in the polls . . . this is as much a fact in my political judgment as Newton\u2019s laws of physics.\u201d Rennard argued that such a loss would be acceptable in exchange for \u201cproportional representation and with it permanent influence\u201d.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
As it would have been in the 1990s, so it was in 2010. That calculation, rather than principled opposition to First Past the Post, explained why electoral reform was such a high priority for the Lib Dems during coalition negotiations. Sharing power with the Conservatives meant \u201cwe could lose up to half of our vote\u201d, writes Laws. \u201cWe had to protect against that by reforming the voting system so that we secured fairer representation for each vote gained.\u201d Unfortunately for Laws and his colleagues, Oliver Letwin, one of the Conservative coalition negotiators, was right when he said: \u201cWe will deliver the referendum [on Alternative Vote versus First Past the Post] exactly as promised. And then we will beat the hell out of you in the vote!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n
After defeat in that referendum, just a year into the government, the fate of the party was, by its own logic, largely sealed. A loss of seats seemed certain \u2014 but Clegg and Co failed to limit that damage. Breaking their promise to vote against any rise in tuition fees certainly angered huge swathes of their supporters. Though Laws stands by the increased fees, pointing out that social mobility is not served by subsidising middle-class degrees, the real mistake was the promise, not its breach. <\/p>\n
The broader problem was, according to Laws, that the Lib Dems were \u201ctoo Lib Demmy\u201d. They were not as ruthless as their Conservative colleagues, who fought for \u2014 and won \u2014 the lion\u2019s share of the credit for the things the coalition got right.<\/p>\n
Refreshingly, Coalition<\/em> is mostly free from the score-settling that can dominate political memoirs. Vince Cable, a thorn in the side not just of Clegg but the government in which Cable himself served for the full five years, is treated more respectfully than he might have been. There is more poison in Laws\u2019s pen when he writes of Chris Huhne. On the morning Huhne entered a guilty plea in the trial that would end his political career \u2014 after publicly and privately insisting that he had done nothing wrong\u2014he is recorded as having said to a Lib Dem press officer there to offer support: \u201cIn my life to date I have had three very successful careers \u2014 in journalism, in business and in politics. I guess today will mark the beginning of my fourth successful career.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of more relevance in this parliament are Laws\u2019s and Clegg\u2019s reflections on the senior Conservatives they worked so closely with. Osborne is described by Laws as \u201camusing, self-deprecating, strategic, focusing on the long-term and not just the short-term challenges and \u2014 of course \u2014 brutally political. He is a man who understands in great detail his political opponents \u2014 their strengths and their weaknesses.\u201d One revelation to emerge from Coalition<\/em> is that at Osborne\u2019s weakest moment, in the aftermath of the 2012 \u201comnishambles\u201d budget, he came to Laws with the offer of a \u201ccoupon\u201d election in which Conservatives and Lib Dems would make way for one another in key seats. The offer is a reminder of just how unlikely a Conservative majority looked a few years before it was won. How relieved Osborne must now be that Laws refused the offer. <\/p>\n
Laws found life in Michael Gove\u2019s Department for Education a cocktail of exasperation and exhilaration. He recounts a meeting in which Dominic Cummings, Gove\u2019s notoriously abrasive special adviser, told a room full of male civil servants: \u201cWhen I first came to this department in 2011, I said we should sack half of the staff. I was told it would be impossible and the department would collapse. Well, we have done it, and who actually noticed? Now I think we need to go even further. There are far too many white men in their middle fifties . . . who are no good. . . . They should be sacked and replaced by young women in their twenties and thirties.\u201d <\/p>\n
When Laws lodged his objection to Gove\u2019s insistence that all GCSE English students read a 19th-century novel, the response read: \u201cThe Secretary of State insists on this prescription because the 19th century represents the most important period for the novel as a cultural form . . . A student of English literature who hasn\u2019t studied a 19th-century novel is like a student of maths who hasn\u2019t studied multiplication.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laws and Gove eventually found common ground on reversing dumbing down. Laws was persuaded there was work to do by a question in a GCSE Physical Education paper that asked: \u201cWhich of the following sports would you be likely to engage in if you were an introvert? A. Cheerleader;\u00a0 B. Volleyball; C. Cricket; D. Cross-Country Runner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laws thought he\u2019d be relieved when Gove was moved from the Department of Education but he found, to his surprise, that he missed his old boss: \u201cIn a Conservative party that was too often the defender of the interests of those who benefited from the status quo, here was a truly radical advocate of higher standards for all and greater equality of opportunity. Here was a man who quite genuinely wanted to break Britain\u2019s class-ridden society open to \u2018outsiders\u2019.\u201d <\/p>\n
The line in Coalition<\/em> most relevant to our present political predicament is Nick Clegg\u2019s assessment of the Prime Minister: \u201cCameron has a quicksilver mind and lots of emotional common sense . . . He ducks and weaves and always believes he can get himself out of a tight corner. One day he won\u2019t.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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\n![\"\"](\"\/standpoint\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/critique-birds.jpg\"\/)
The healing power of birdsong<\/a>
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\n![\"\"](\"\/standpoint\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/bts-120x120.jpg\"\/)
The power of pop<\/a><\/p>\nWhat to read next<\/h6>\n
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\nThe healing power of birdsong<\/a>
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\nThe power of pop<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The inside story of the Lib Dems in the coalition government is a brave attempt to explain where it all went wrong<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}