COITION GOVERNMENT or WHO GETS SHAFTED?

The Cameron/Clegg era has begun. One day – possibly one day quite soon – we shall look back on that first joint press conference and laugh. The instant commentaries were largely favourable, citing the relaxed demeanour, the assumed mutual respect, the body language. Even the fact of the session being in the Downing Street garden excited comment but hey, Tony Blair held key press conferences there and it’s also where John Major launched his put-up-or-shut-up fight back against the backbench critics of his government, after which John Redwood (remember him?) resigned from the cabinet to mount a challenge immortalized by The Sun as “REDWOOD v DEAD WOOD”.

Cameron said as much as he decently could and sought to make it all seem very natural and straightforward. Clegg’s prepared statement was awful, like something left over from the election campaign or a peroration he might have wished he’d used in one of the television debates. This was a callow miscalculation.

The press questioning harped dully on the arrangements, even unto a second administration – I would guess that little serious thought has yet been expended on how they will play the 2015 election, the date of which evidently will soon be determined by statute. But it reminded me of nothing so much as an in-coming US president, assuring us all that the vice president has a real and important job to do. That’s never how it turns out in practice, prompting Cactus Jack Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s VP, to remark that the post “wasn’t worth a bucket of warm shit” (history’s version: “a bucket of warm spit”).


Clegg and Cameron's first joint press call


One of the trajectories to plot under the new regime will be that of the growing disillusionment, resentment and sheer day-to-day boredom evinced by Deputy Prime Minister Clegg. There was a bit of banter about how “Nick” will take Prime Minister’s Questions when the PM himself is away and Cameron threw away a line about a lot of foreign travel – I can’t find the passage on the net – but that immediately reminds us that DPM Clegg won’t be going to Washington and Moscow and Jerusalem and Paris, he’ll be kicking his heels in Downing Street trying to reform parliament like some junior policy wonk. John Prescott took the odd PMQ for Blair and Harriet Harman for Brown and all it underlined was their relative irrelevance.

We’re told that as many as twenty Lib Dems will have jobs. I wonder where that leaves the other 37. Are they obliged to support the government? Presumably they will be whipped to do so. But if among their number are Simon Hughes, Norman Baker, Nick Harvey, Norman Lamb and the former leaders Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell, they may well prove to be – let’s say – an independent-minded group. And what will the party do at by-elections? Because of the death of the UKIP candidate during the general election campaign, the ballot in the constituency of Thirsk and Malton has been delayed and will be held a fortnight tomorrow. What those voters have to say will be quite as interesting as what the candidates have to say. The Lib Dem candidate there is called Howard Keal so I imagine he will say “My defences are down” or perhaps “Where is the life that once I led?”

Naturally everyone who isn't a Labour MP is putting a hopeful smile on it all. But I still bet that, for all the determined talk of strong, stable government, this arrangement will not last much beyond eighteen months. Why? The remark that legend has credited to Harold Macmillan is the answer: “Events, dear boy. Events”.