Jeremy Scott Adidas The deputy prime minister said that the Liberal Democrats remain focused on "rescuing, repairing and rebalancing the economy", but this is a bit like saying that despite the mutual food and sex ban the couple will strive to keep the household finances in order. It scarcely disguises the fact that Cameron and Clegg's civil partnership is in deep trouble, since the latter, to follow the metaphor, isn't enjoying any food and the former isn't getting any sex.
Indeed, a deal of this kind – nothing much doing in the kitchen or the bedroom, but orderly consideration of domestic finances – sounds remarkably like a domestic equivalent of "confidence and supply": exactly the arrangement that many Tory MPs and two then Conservative shadow cabinet members, Chris Grayling and Theresa Villiers, wanted in the first place.
It may, of course, be that I am wrong, and that the coalition lasts until 2015. But consider the matter from the viewpoint of the J Alfred Prufrock MPs of the Tory backbenches – the real players in the present drama, since their lack of attachment to faction or viewpoint is more than compensated for by their relatively large numbers and, therefore, their decisive impact on internal events. Their prime motive is simple: they want to save their seats.
Jeremy Scott Shoes Their appreciation of the prime minister for his part in winning those seats is mingled by resentment that he didn't achieve a majority. But to date they have suspended judgement, since they have been assured that he has a master plan: namely, a boundary review which would have the happy effect of greatly reducing Labour's electoral advantage.
Some of these Prufrocks lose out from the review, but more gain. And, suddenly, it is not to be effected (unless the deputy prime minister backs down or the revision can be voted through anyway: the latter event appears to me to be even more unlikely than the first). At a stroke, Cameron will need an 8-10% poll lead over Labour at the next election. If he couldn't manage it last time round, how on Earth will he manage it next time?
Even more importantly, what is his plan for managing it? He could of course try to transform himself into a more conservative Conservative – championing an EU referendum and big tax cuts and withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights and new grammar schools and no gay marriage and no more onshore wind farms, and so on.
But he could not get such measures through the government if in coalition or through parliament if not, since the Liberal Democrats would join Labour in voting them down. He could, of course, promise them in the next Conservative manifesto, but there would be something unconvincing about his doing so. After all, the prime minister is not a conservative Conservative – in crude terms – caihaierkai 8/14 but a self-proclaimed liberal conservative: that's how he made his name.
And were he to give up trying to be one, any government that he led in future would seem less coherent than that he leads now – and although it has many strengths, coherence is not one of them. In short, the Prufrocks are asking a question – what's your plan to win now? To which there appears to be no answer.
Cameron might reasonably reply that Clegg has simply done what he – the prime minister – warned his backbenchers the deputy prime minister would do were Lords reform denied his party. But politics, as Cameron knows full well, isn't a fair business. As far as the Prufrocks are concerned, he didn't win the last next election and now won't win the next one, either – and, worse, their seats and careers are in play and in peril.
The Commons meets again in September. With the collapse of Lords reform, business is unlikely to be heavy. Cameron is not due to address the 1922 Committee, but it would be surprising were he not asked to do so. The committee's executive will also meet. And a minority of Tory MPs are less well-disposed to him than the Prufrocks.
Their resentment began with the A-list – which they felt told them their faces didn't fit – and its effects linger still: they will seize on the Louise Mensch-caused Corby byelection as evidence of the frivolity of a project that prized fashion (in their view) above proven track records. They won't be slow to remind their colleagues that Mensch was a Tory turned admirer of Tony Blair turned Tory again – a symbol, they will claim, of what's gone wrong.
We know the rest of the score. The non-recovery. The budget (and other) U-turns. The eurozone crisis. The absence of a big growth plan. The creakiness of the Number 10 machine. The resurgence of Miliband. The persistence of Ukip. The presence of Boris.
I spoke yesterday to a senior minister who told me that if the Liberal Democrats don't vote for the boundary review, Cameron should go for minority government, and to a senior source who said that the party has suddenly moved much closer to a leadership election. True, Cameron has no big Conservative rival either in his cabinet or on the backbenchers. And conventional wisdom is that he won't be deposed unless there is one.
I wonder. There was no single agreed successor to either Margaret Thatcher or Iain Duncan Smith when they were forced out by Tory MPs. The number of malcontents is probably 40 or so. But add to that number some panicky Prufrocks and one's getting on for at least a fifth of the parliamentary party. A single day has raised the risk to the coalition's survival. And to Cameron's, too.
Jeremy Scott Wings
Tensions within the U.K. coalition government intensified Monday after a Conservative Party rebellion forced Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to abandon his long-held goal of reforming the country's unelected House of Lords.
It is a serious blow for his Liberal Democrats, who had made overhauling the upper house a key objective in the power-sharing agreement they struck with Conservatives following the 2010 election.
Mr. Clegg said the Conservatives had broken their coalition contract with the Liberal Democrats by failing to honor their commitment to the reform.
The Liberal Democrats announced they would vote against a redrawing of Britain’s electoral map, one that was expected to hand the Tories up to 20 extra seats at the next general election.
The move – in revenge for Conservative backbenchers blocking House of Lords reform – plunges the Coalition into a fresh crisis after ministers insisted the existing boundaries handed Labour an unfair advantage.
Without the shake- up, the Conservatives will need to win by up to 11 points in 2015, in order to win a Commons majority. The party is currently nine points behind Labour.
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In Merseyside, the scrapping of 50 constituencies would have pitched Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) and Luciana Berger (Wavertree) into a head-to-head battle for a single Liverpool seat.
One seat was also due to disappear in Wirral, where the electorates are small, as was Chancellor George Osborne’s Tatton constituency, in Cheshire.
Last night, Alison McGovern – the Wirral South MP, whose constituency was to be split between three new seats of Mersey Banks, Hoylake and Neston and a reworked Birkenhead – welcomed the U-turn.