The growing pains of British politics

Let me make it clear right from the beginning: the Conservatives can’t be trusted. After a General Election in which their leader, the man who is now buttering his toast in Downing Street, appealed to the lowest instincts of loathing and jingoism, in which their mantra was one of entitlement to power, combined with disdain for any radical change, and in which they began by allowing one of their frontbenchers to play dog-whistle politics, calling homophobes to their side, they remain a backward-looking, small-minded party, a party defined more by its phobias than any finer aspirations. Paradoxically, my distaste for them is what makes me stomach, just about, the coalition that has come into being.

Don’t get me wrong: my dislike of Tory politics is equalled by despair at the Labour Party. They too have become a party so instinctively of the right that they have lost the right even to mouth the word progressive — think how the divide between rich and poor has increased under their watch, while our civil liberties have been undermined in the name of a national security which has become more perilous precisely because of the unjust military escapades in which they embroiled us.

With whichever party negotiations had been successful, there would have been both ideological disagreement and a clash of approach. But, frankly, there was only one set of discussions that could have created a coalition. Discussions with Labour were not, on the present arithmetic, going to provide a workable majority, especially when some of their members would have rebelled on fundamental issues like voting reform. The only practicable possibility was an accommodation with the Tories.

It galls me to see Cameron holding the post of Prime Minister (he is patently unworthy for the role). It worries me that a Europhobe like Hague is Foreign Secretary (remember his own ill-fated General Election? ‘Seven days to save the pound’). It causes a sardonic smile to know that the boy Osborne is Chancellor (pass round the Coke and let’s toast him with it). But, with the results of the elections as they were, there was little chance of  them not being there. The alternative was, in effect, to attempt to force a snap election, which would have served to confirm the Tory logic that only an outright majority for one party in a first-past-the-post, two-party system was an acceptable verdict from the British electorate.

Given that they were going to place themselves round the Cabinet table, is it better for the Liberal Democrats just to watch them get comfortable, or should we be muscling in on the act? Better, surely, in the end, to be there, to be a brake on their worst instincts. We sully our hands, but we save our country from the fate of a simple Con administration.

This is politics as it begins (despite the Tories themselves) to mature. It is not enjoyable for our party — we would be in our comfort zone if we stood on the sidelines — but it is how business must be done: we don’t choose our colleagues, the electorate has done. The key, at this moment, is to take what’s happened as a catalyst for further maturation of our politics. A referendum on the Alternative Vote is not enough to provide fairer politics — we need an elected second chamber, stricter rules on outside earnings, recall of MPs, and proportional representation — but this one referendum can unlock further change. We will need to approach it as a change not sufficient in itself, but the start of a process of more fundamental transformation, offered to us by the party most allergic to reform. The next few years may well be replete with delicious irony.

There is a quotation often misattributed to Machiavelli, but actually of more modern origin (a prize to the first of you who identifies its source correctly): ‘My father taught me, keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.’ The Tories are sitting right in front of us, is that close enough?