The ODDS COUPLE

I had intended to entertain my readers with intelligence of the odds that William Hill are offering against a collapse of the Con-Dem coalition within six months but alas, the leading name in gambling both on and off line shows no interest in responding to my queries, either by email or by phone. I am no betting man myself but I imagined (perhaps over-stimulated by the musical Guys and Dolls) that those who live for a flutter would bet on absolutely anything. Perhaps like everyone else William Hill are pulling in their horns. Perhaps they’re confining themselves to bingo.

What odds would you take against Vince Cable being the first minister to walk? Six-to-four on, do you suppose? And when? Three-to-one against him going before the end of July, is that realistic? Not that I doubt the sturdiness of the coalition agreement revealed in all its glorious detail yesterday, you understand. I just beg to propose that the fixed smiles will start to hurt their teeth before too long.


Steve Bell's image of Vince Cable as the elephant in the room

Cable doesn’t strike me as someone who will submit to suffering fools gladly on a daily basis for more than a few weeks. And George Osborne looked like the epitome of the hollow man when Cable was opposing him in the general election battle and looks the same today. They make doubtful bedfellows, not so much Osborne & Little as Osborne & Little Patience. Then there’s the unfathomable David Laws, the Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who reportedly sent Osborne away with a flea in his ear when he, Osborne, attempted (clumsily, you picture) to recruit him to the Tory cause a year or two ago. Laws is nobody’s patsy, methinks.

Apologists for the new government are apt to trot out the bromide that the political parties are themselves coalitions. This is true, of course, up to a point. Harold Wilson described the Labour Party as “broad church”. Harold Wilson knew of what he spoke and intended the remarks he passed to be memorable. He was probably the last prime minister we will ever have to speak often with an eye to posterity. He is certainly the most recent to do so. Quotable lines from Blair – “I’m a pretty straight kind of guy”, “this is not a moment for sound bites, but …” – and Thatcher – “we are a grandmother” – are remembered more for their idiocy than for their resonance; Thatcher abandoned consciously speaking for the history books after her risible St Francis of Assisi moment and her clunky “the lady’s not for turning”, Ronald Millar-scripted speech.

The Labour Party of Wilson’s time could comfortably straddle Ian Mikardo and Sir Frank Soskice, brought together under the notion of “pragmatism” (a Wilson watchword, one that I notice that Cameron has revived), but after the Callaghan government was defeated in 1979 the broad church was racked by schism. Michael Foot defeated Denis Healey for the leadership and thereafter Tony Benn came within one percent of Healey in the battle to be deputy leader. Then Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and William Rodgers (“The Gang of Four”) left Labour and set up the Social Democrat Party which, for a time after it merged pragmatically with the Liberals, threatened to replace Labour as the chief party of opposition to Margaret Thatcher. You think we live in interesting times now? You know nothing.


Party-goer Donnelly

There were always honourable members who found themselves out of sorts with the prevailing tenor of the times in the parties up to which they had signed. I recall a rum cove called Desmond Donnelly who, Wikipedia kindly reminds me, “moved between parties on five occasions” which might well be a world record, though only four moves are actually recorded (counting has ceased to be a skill in contemporary Britain). I became aware of him in 1968 when he and fellow Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt fell out with the party. Donnelly set up something called The Democratic Party which lasted for two years before, without warning, he defected to the Tory Party which, you figure, was his natural home all along.

Donnelly and Wyatt “crossed the floor”, in the parliamentary jargon. They left the governing party benches and sat across the aisle with the Tory opposition. Wyatt stayed there; his daughter Petronella famously had an affair with Boris Johnson. It is an oft-remarked tendency in people – especially men – to grow more conservative – and indeed Conservative – as they grow older and so there have always been Labour MPs who have drifted towards the Tories. Others have hardened in their Socialism. Well-known defectors from Labour include Ray Gunter, Dick Taverne, Chris Mayhew, John Stonehouse, Reg Prentice, Bryan Magee, Bob Mellish, Dave Nellist, Dennis Canavan, George Galloway and Ken Livingstone, the last of whom of course has been reconciled.

Sir Hartley Shawcross, the first post-war Attorney-General in the Attlee government and maker of the much quoted remark “we are the masters now”, was daily expected to defect, earning him the blithe nickname Sir Shortly Floorcross. Instead, he sat in the Lords as a crossbencher (i.e. with no party affiliation) and lived to the ripe age of 101.


Sir Shortly

But not all the traffic has been away from Labour. Alan Howarth, Shaun Woodward and Quentin Davies all quit the Tories and became Labour ministers. And many more have loudly walked out on the leadership of one or other party while in government without changing allegiance: George Brown (though he did eventually leave Labour), Michael Heseltine, Geoffrey Howe, Robin Cook, Clare Short and quite a parade from Gordon Brown’s administration.

The Cameron-Clegg coalition may well have trouble from their own backbenchers. The Tory right has kept very quiet for the five years that Cameron has been leader and the making of the coalition has stretched their silence to the limit. What will snap their patience: Europe? Taxation? Parliamentary reform? The cabinet appointment of former leader Iain Duncan Smith is meant to placate the right but he has become something of a one-issue merchant and hence his acquiescence is rather a special case. Bar-room gossip suggests that the Lib Dems are haemorrhaging members appalled by alliance with the Tories. It will be fascinating to see what the delayed election in Thirsk and Malton throws up next week. Most likely, all the commentators will find themselves reading far too much into it, whatever the voting pattern.