Some thoughts on reading “Coalition” by David Laws

Could Nick Clegg be the "comeback kid"?

I am currently working my way through ex MP and Minister David Laws' book on the 2010-2015 Coalition government. Whether it's a little soon to be penning such a portrait of what many of us feel was a worthwhile, if flawed, project so soon after its demise is debatable. The cynics might conclude that, deprived of his parliamentary and ministerial source of income, Mr Laws was presented by his publisher with an offer he could not refuse. Whatever his motives, his quite candid book offers a fascinating insight into how governments work and into some of the characters who populate them. Some of you will probably take issue with some of my conclusions, as I have always been a supporter of this experiment in peace time cohabitation. After all, if you believe in Proportional Representation, which usually, but no always, produces parties with no overall majority, you have got to put your money where your mouth is and not back off when the first, and possibly, only opportunity in a generation or more for real cross party cooperation presents itself.

I'm glad that Mr Laws started at the end, so to speak. We all know what happened in the 2015 General Election so, having got that out of the way in his rather sad introduction it's interesting how the contrast emerges in Chapter One with the 'Hung Parliament'. Goodness me, that Rose Garden moment seems like history now and I suppose it is. What the author makes clear throughout the book is how Dave and Nick got on. Well, they would, wouldn't they? In the words of ex nurse, jungle survivor and MP for Mid Bedfordshire, Nadine Dorries, as two 'posh boys', they would find much in common, although I reckon that they both might actually have known the price of milk, especially if it came from Waitrose!

Hubris is a word that we often use with politicians. It might be unfair to use it in relation to Nick Clegg, although an inability to empathise with ordinary people might feature somewhere, but it's not their fault that they happened to be born into relatively well off families, as were, for that matter, Messrs Blair and Miliband. You could add to that the author himself, the son of a banker, like his party leader, privately educated with a double first in economics from Cambridge. As an 'Orange Book Liberal' his all too obvious disdain of parliamentary party away days in cheap hotels, at which he endeavoured to spend as little time as possible, and his apparent failure to recognise fully why he had to resign from the government almost as soon as the ink was dry on the Coalition Agreement does not say much for his judgement.

However, what is interesting is what he has to say about some of his coalition colleagues on both sides of the political divide. Number one in the firing line is Vince Cable, who, mainly because of his previous links to Labour and possibly, to use Faragean terms, because he had, in a previous life, actually had 'a proper job', was considered by many of the Lib Dem inner circle to be a bit of a loose cannon. There was Chris Huhne, who, had the Royal Mail got its act together in 2007, could actually have been Leader of the Party instead of Nick Clegg. There would appear to have been a certain amount of Schadenfreude at his political demise. Then there was the author's successor at the Treasury, Danny Alexander, the son of a potter, whose previous work experience, following a degree in PPE from Oxford, was Press Officer for the Scottish Lib Dems, then Director of Communications for the European Movement and finally that prestigious position of Communications Director for the Cairngorms National Park Authority. This less than impressive CV belied an innate ability, which began to shine as his talents were revealed during his all too brief ministerial and parliamentary career cut cruelly short by his being in the wrong constituency at the wrong time.

The great Lord Ashdown was also the subject of a few interesting observations. His almost bizarre observation to the author on a car journey down to Yeovil that his Nick needed to lose weight, wear glasses and open his legs more when being questioned makes me wonder whether Paddy was still suffering after all those testosterone fuelled years in the Special Boat Squadron! Having met ex Captain Ashdown on several occasions has not altered my admiration for the man or what he achieved in politics, this particular revelation by David Laws does show another side of him that may surprise those not in the know.

I liked the portraits of some of the Tories as well. Gove, the "Maoist", with whom the author forged a close working relationship in the Department of Education, Johnson the bumbling usurper, who was deeply jealous of his younger Etonian rival and whom Cameron never really trusted, Letwin the uncontrollable chuckler and the author of some crackpot ideas that fortunately never made it past the Quad, David Cameron himself, whose only political idea was to keep the Tories in power, Osborne, the real political schemer, hardnosed politicians such as Grayling and particularly Teresa May, who not only fought tooth and nail with Danny to preserve her budget but also made sure the Lib Dem Home Officer Minister, Lynne Featherstone, never got her hands on the really important stuff are some who stand out in the pages of this rather lengthy tome.

As we emerge shell shocked from the Referendum vote into an uncertain future, what comes over clearly in many of the pages of the book is how well Cameron and Clegg and, in fairness, most of the movers and shakers of the 'One Nation' Tory party and the less than Liberal Democrats got on and what a good fist they made of putting our country back on a even keel. It was clear that both Dave and Nick had reckoned on another five years of coalition government, which is probably why the former added that Manifesto promise of an EU referendum to appease the 'bastards' in his party, knowing that it would never see the light of day if the Lib Dems were there to apply the brakes. The fact that our party's leadership was unable to commit before parliament had run its course to having some kind of electoral pact to make sure it happened probably sealed our fate in the 2015 General Election, although I doubt whether any pre election deal would have gone down well with the grassroots of either party.

So, as the Tory party seeks a new Leader, who will automatically become our nation's 'Leader' in the difficult negotiations with the EU that lie ahead, chosen incidentally by a Tory party membership of well under 200,000 people and Labour tears itself apart again, from where does our true leadership come? The current political disintegration on these islands, with possible repercussions on the European mainland as well, reminds me of the 1930s, when economic disaster saw the emergence of 'strong men' in Europe and movements of the right even in our own country, which viewed democracy as having failed the masses.

Like Jeremy Corbyn, our current Lib Dem Leader is a decent man, but, in the recent words of Alasdair Campbell, could you really see either man as a Prime Minister? Therein lies the problem. However, as far as our party is concerned, despite his many mistakes, some of which are listed by David Laws in his book, Nick Clegg comes across as a decent man whose reputation deserves a reappraisal. As one who has indeed passed judgement on him many times in the past year, I now have a feeling that history may judge Nicholas William Peter Clegg in a very different light after the events of last week, especially if you happen to have read his very prescient piece a week before the vote in the online press:

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/comment/will-wake-vote-leave/

Could he yet prove to be the 'Comeback Kid'?

Cllr John Marriott