Laws Coalition

The Inside Story of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-78590-035-8
Verlag: Biteback Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 624 Seiten

When David Cameron and Nick Clegg stepped out into the rose garden at No. 10 to launch the first coalition government since the Second World War, it was amid a sea of uncertainty. Some doubted whether the coalition could survive a full term - or even a full year. Five years later, this bold departure for British politics had weathered storms, spending cuts and military strikes, rows, referendums and riots. In this compelling insider account, David Laws lays bare the inner workings of the coalition government from its birth in 2010 to its demise in 2015. As one of the chief Lib Dem negotiators, Laws had a front-row seat from the very beginning of the parliament. Holding key posts in the heart of government, he was there for the triumphs, the tantrums and the tactical manoeuvrings. Now, he brings this experience to bear, revealing how crucial decisions were made, uncovering the often explosive divisions between and within the coalition parties, and candidly exploring the personalities and positions of the leading players on both sides of the government. Honest, insightful and at times shocking, Coalition shines a powerful light on perhaps the most fascinating political partnership of modern times.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Laws, David

Leseproben

AN EXIT POLL
MAY 2015 On the evening of Wednesday 6 May 2015, Nick Clegg had completed the final leg of his election campaign tour. The Liberal Democrat leader’s final sweep through the UK had started at sunrise in the far south-west of England, at Lands’s End, on the previous day and it had now finished in the far north of Scotland, at John O’ Groats. Now, on Wednesday night, Nick Clegg was travelling back to his constituency in Sheffield, in a tiny plane, accompanied only by his senior press spokesman – the laddish, sharp-tongued cheeky chappy James McGrory. The small plane was making its way south through a ferocious storm, and was being pitched around in the black sky. ‘Don’t worry,’ said the pilot, ‘this plane is thirty years old, and it hasn’t come down yet!’ Nick Clegg didn’t feel particularly reassured. James McGrory dropped off to sleep. Sitting in his seat, and reflecting back on the exhausting six-week election campaign, the Liberal Democrat leader felt that it had gone as well as could be expected. His performance in the election debates had been well received, and he felt that the campaign was much better managed and organised than in 2010. By late evening, the Deputy Prime Minister was safely home in Sheffield with his wife, Miriam, preparing for the final day of the election. Much further to the south, in my house in the village of South Petherton, just a few miles from Yeovil in Somerset, I was making my preparations for the last day of our local campaign. I was also looking through for the last time the briefing papers that our Liberal Democrat team had prepared in the event that there was a hung parliament. I was one of a small team of four MPs and one peer who had been selected a year earlier by Nick Clegg to form our negotiating team for any potential coalition talks. While Danny Alexander was the chair of this group, he was widely expected to lose his seat. And on Sunday 3 May, Nick, Danny and I had met in south London and we had agreed that I would take over the leadership of our negotiating committee in the event that Danny was no longer an MP on 8 May. Preparations complete, I was in bed by midnight and fell instantly to sleep. Next morning, my alarm woke me at 4.30 a.m. and by 5.30 I was meeting a group of young Liberal Democrat activists in the streets of south Yeovil. We were gathering early so we could put out a final election-morning leaflet in this key part of the constituency. For any candidate, the last day of an election is simultaneously nerve-racking and quite soothing. All the hard work is done and you know that the end is finally in sight. But you also know that just a few votes could be critically important, so you have to work right to close of polls at 10 p.m. The Liberal Democrats held fifty-six seats in the House of Commons. My own private calculations showed that on a bad night we could be left with as few as twenty, and on a good night it could be as high as thirty. So twenty-five parliamentary seats for the Liberal Democrats was my central prediction – and I fully expected my own constituency of Yeovil to be one of those we held, albeit with a very much reduced majority. The morning was cloudy, with very light rain. We had finished putting out our leaflets by around 7 a.m. and we passed one of our local councillors, Bridget Dollard, heading off to man the local polling station. Throughout the day, as always on election days, we called our voters to encourage them to cast their votes. The reception we received was generally positive, but there was one early sign that caused me concern. My superb and experienced election agent, Sam Crabb, reported that in one part of Yeovil – the parish of Brympton – the turnout was unusually high. Indeed, he said that there were queues at the polling stations before 9 a.m. – unheard of in this part of Yeovil. Brympton was a key Lib Dem/Conservative battleground, where a lot of floating voters lived. What was galvanising voters to turn out in such areas so early, I wondered. That night we would find out the answer. My day started in Rowan Way, with hard-working activists such as Emma Dunn and Kris Castle. It ended in Westland Road – a ‘heartland’ Liberal Democrat area, just outside the gates of the famous helicopter factory, where our vote seemed to me to be as strong as ever. Knowing that the next twenty-four hours were likely to be very busy, and almost certainly without opportunities to sleep, I finished my ‘knocking up’ of Lib Dem voters at 8.30 p.m., and I was back home in South Petherton by 9 p.m. – just one hour before polls closed in one of the closest general elections in fifty years. In Sheffield, Nick Clegg had also spent the day out door-knocking, in the more affluent parts of his seat, seeking to win over former Conservative voters in what was now a Lib Dem/Labour marginal seat. He was home in the early evening and made his final preparations for what was bound to be a whirlwind forty-eight hours. In South Petherton, I packed my bags into my car, with all the material that I would need in the event of hung parliament negotiations. The national election result still seemed highly uncertain, but a hung parliament was regarded as a high probability and I expected to go straight from my count in Yeovil to Whitehall – possibly using as a first base my ministerial office in the Cabinet Office, at 70 Whitehall. But before 70 Whitehall, it so happened that I was off to 4 Whitehall. 4 Whitehall, South Petherton, was the home of the unassuming, hard-working, mild-mannered, but formidable Joan Raikes, the chairman of my local constituency party and a loyal and long-standing supporter of mine and of Paddy Ashdown, my predecessor as Yeovil MP. By tradition, Joan hosted a dinner for the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate on general election night – to keep our minds off the count taking place just a few miles away. I arrived at Joan’s at around 9.50 p.m. – just in time to settle down to dinner before the BBC exit poll was released. Joan switched the television to BBC1 and served up dinner – lamb casserole. The countdown to 10 p.m. began, and at that moment Joan got up from the table to get some drinks from the kitchen. And then it was 10 p.m. The BBC election night music played, sending tingles down my spine. And suddenly there was David Dimbleby with the BBC exit poll result. I held my breath and leaned forward: We are saying the Conservatives are the largest party. Here are the figures which we have. Quite remarkable this exit poll. The Conservatives on 316, that’s up 9 since the last election in 2010. Ed Miliband, for Labour, 77 behind him at 239, down 19. If that is the story, it is quite a sensational story. It might be sensational, but my focus was no longer on the balance between the Conservative and Labour results. What on the earth was the Liberal Democrat projected seats total? I rose to my feet and squinted at the television screen, over on the other side of the room. My heart sank. Alongside the forecast number of Conservative and Labour seats was the Liberal Democrat figure: ten. If that was true, there would be no coalition. And, more seriously, most of our parliamentary party had just been wiped out. The projected seats total was spectacularly lower than almost anyone had previously forecast. Of course, it was ‘only an exit poll’, and on television Paddy Ashdown was saying that he would eat his hat if the number was proved right. But we had been through all this in 2010, when the exit poll had projected far fewer seats than we had expected. We had thought the exit poll must be wrong in 2010, but it turned out to be almost exactly right. I was immediately convinced that the figure of ten Liberal Democrat seats was going to be about right. Not only was this a disaster for my party, but it also meant I could not even take for granted my own constituency in Yeovil. Indeed, I immediately recalled a recent conversation with Ryan Coetzee, our chief election strategist, in our London HQ when I asked for their analysis of the canvassing and polling figures for Yeovil. ‘They look all right,’ I was told. ‘But to be honest, we are not focusing much on your seat. If we don’t win Yeovil, we’d only have about ten seats left anyway.’ I texted Sam Crabb, who was already at the count in Yeovil. ‘You seem to be ahead on the postal votes,’ he texted back, ‘but it is close. Maybe 43 per cent to 37 per cent.’ I was temporarily cheered – this was about the margin of victory overall that I had expected. Over the previous few days, I had pressed Nick Clegg to fix a telephone conference call for soon after the exit poll results, so that we could talk about the implications of the likely result. The conference call was due shortly. Meanwhile, Joan and I ate large bowls of chocolate ice cream for temporary cheer. I dialled in to our conference call at 10.30 p.m. We could no longer rely on ‘Switch’, the 10 Downing Street switchboard, which fixed up these conference calls in government, since we were now in political mode, not government mode. On the call when I joined it were Jonny Oates, Nick’s chief of staff; Danny Alexander; Stephen Lotinga, Nick’s press chief; and Ryan Coetzee, chief election strategist. Paddy Ashdown, the general election chairman, was still on the BBC, trying his best to play down the exit poll. While we waited for Nick to come on the call, Ryan said, ‘This poll has just got to be wrong, hasn’t it?’ He asked me how things were going in Yeovil, and whether we thought we had lost. I cautiously...