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Coalition Government

My Lords, that great man Benjamin Disraeli is renowned for two famous observations, both of which are being confirmed by the present Government. The first is that this country is divided into two nations, the rich and the poor—we have seen that confirmed—and the second is that England does not love coalitions, which is a view that has been confirmed in recent opinion polls, not to mention by the good people of Oldham and Saddleworth. We have had three peacetime coalitions of Liberals and Conservatives in this country in recent times, and they have all been catastrophic. The coalition of 1895 dragged us into the Boer War and presided over the death of 27,000 Boer women and children in concentration camps. The coalition of 1918 took us into the Black and Tans period in Ireland and into the depression of the interwar years. Under the 1931-32 coalition, the social consequences of that depression got much worse. However one evaluates their effect on the country, the effect on the Liberal Party was particularly calamitous. The 1918-22 coalition saw the party divide into two and it ended the front-rank careers of both Asquith and Lloyd George; today, coalition still produces certain anomalies. It is rather striking to compare the fate of Lord Addison—Dr Addison was sacked in 1921—and Dr Cable, who was demoted in the recent past. The two are similar in many ways, except that I am not aware that Addison had any skill at ballroom dancing. The 1931-32 coalition provides an even clearer analogy, because it produced the famous and notorious ““agreement to differ””. The agreement to differ over free trade saw the Liberals resign en masse, with the effect that they were no longer a party credibly of opposition let alone of government. Such coalitions have led to constitutional anomalies, and both the 1918 coalition and the current coalition have affected your Lordships’ House in fundamental ways. The 1918 coalition attempted to flood the House of Lords through the sale of honours—the work of my countryman, David Lloyd George—and the current coalition has seen not the sale of honours but the creation of a large number of new Peers to enhance the already very strong majority that the Government have. As I have mentioned, in 1931 we saw the agreement to differ, with the Liberal Ministers resigning; now we have the agreement to differ over the views that will be taken in the referendum. The current coalition is significantly different, though, as my noble friend Lady Symons observed in her admirable speech, because it is scarred by its origins in a deeper way than the earlier coalitions. The coalition of 1918 was scarred by the coupon—the private pact between the Conservatives and the Liberals to share out the seats in an arbitrary and vindictive way. The 1931 coalition was scarred by rumours of its originating in a bankers’ ramp—the private negotiations between politicians and bankers and perhaps people at the courts. The current coalition, again, is the product of a private negotiation. It is not the result of what David Lloyd George called the greater size of the people but the result of a secret conclave. Unlike in 1918 and 1931, the outcome was a Government for which no one has voted. The current coalition has arisen not openly through the popular will but privately through secret manoeuvres. As has been said by previous speakers, including the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, the earlier coalitions were all formed before an election, so people knew what they were getting. There was a coalition manifesto in 1918 and also in 1931. In 1918, 5 million people voted for Lloyd George’s coalition; in 1931, 13 million people voted for Ramsay MacDonald’s coalition; no one, however, voted for the coalition that we have today. Indeed, many people voted Liberal Democrat on the basis of the avowals of that party that voting Liberal Democrat was the way to keep the Tories out of office, so we have this anomalous backdrop to the Government as a result The implications for Parliament are quite numerous and have been broadly spelled out already. The Government have no clear manifesto. That is not the same as the divisions that might exist within parties. The Gaitskellites and the Bevanites adhered to the same manifesto in 1951 and 1955; on this occasion, there was no manifesto. That means that fundamental questions can be asked, as my noble friend Lord Plant observed, about the legitimacy of the Government. It certainly means that the Salisbury convention no longer has any meaning. Incidentally, I am delighted that the convention is called the Salisbury/Addison convention. I wrote a life of Lord Addison, so I am glad that he has had his mead of fame at last. However, it is worth pointing out, given that the Government’s programme of reforms is said to be the greatest since 1832, that the Great Reform Act 1832 followed two general elections, in which it was clear what people were voting for, even with the limited franchise that existed then. Secondly, as we have said, the Government have no mandate. They rest their authority not on a programme presented to the electors, but on something called a coalition agreement. The Liberal Democrats manifesto spoke of moderate financial cuts on Keynesian lines, not increasing VAT and making PR an essential precondition of Government. The Liberal Democrats also declared against an increase in tuition fees, on which, as we know, candidates made a pledge. The coalition agreement has imposed immediate swingeing cuts in public expenditure and the welfare state, raised VAT, offered an electoral proposal on AV—a policy of neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats—and raised tuition fees while cutting university spending by 80 per cent. That does not add to the credibility or the honour of the political process in this country or to the honour of the Mother of Parliaments. Thirdly, I will refer to two other points that I do not think have been mentioned. The Ministers that Parliament confronts are not Ministers chosen by the Prime Minister and are not part of a familiar team who campaign in the country but the product of private manoeuvres between two sets of party managers. Ministers are chosen not necessarily for their experience or their suitability for office but because of the demands of the managers of the coalition. That is the kind of thing that has led to the disapprobation of Parliament in countries such as Italy. Finally, it seems to me that civil servants now have a different kind of role. They serve not only the Cabinet but a coalition committee or committees that are designed not to govern the country but to maintain proper relationships between two parties with significantly different outlooks. One might also say that, within the two parties, there are different outlooks, given that the Liberal Democrats have, on the one hand, right-wing Liberal Democrats such as David Laws and Danny Alexander who are of the type that contributed to The Orange Book and, on the other, more traditional social democrats whose affinity is with the Labour Party. The coalition has created great difficulties for Parliament. It has been harmful to democracy, it has no popular will behind its formation, and it has no obvious doctrine of collective responsibility to keep it together. The strange pattern that is being offered to the electorate is very similar to that of 1918-22, when there was no amalgamation of the parties at the grass roots and the Liberals and Conservatives who supported the coalition were, in a sense, in partnership and in rivalry at the same time, with very different rival interpretations of what might happen at the next general election. The coalition is a monument not to parliamentary sovereignty or popular sovereignty but to the connections of an ingrained political class. I once wrote of Gladstone as ““the people’s William””; I would now say to the people’s Benjamin, ““Come back, all is forgiven””.