When I first heard the news that Nick Clegg and David Cameron had joined forces making Cameron the Prime Minister and Clegg the deputy prime minister, my first thoughts were apocalyptical. When I saw David Cameron standing outside number ten, the door slightly ajar, leaning in to his wife in a celebratory moment all I could hear was The Flight of the Valkyries blasting through my head. However, having seen the deal that he’s made with Clegg to get his foot in the door, maybe there is a glimmer of hope for Britain.
The Liberal Democrats have essentially made out quite well in terms of high ranking government jobs, but the reality is that if the Conservatives hadn’t made the deal, they could have faced being locked out of power for all eternity with a Labour / Lib Dem alliance as the other alternative.
So, with his their hands up their backs, the Conservatives have met many of the Lib Dem demands, giving a whole new twist on the outcome of the 2010 general election and making history in the process; a Conservative / Liberal Democrat alliance has never been seen before.
The first big win for Clegg is that out of an unsuccessful election, with results worse than previous years, he is now the deputy prime minister for the UK. As well as his own new seat of power, he has also secured cabinet places for Chris Huhne (secretary of state for energy and climate change), Vince Cable (secretary of state for business), Danny Alexander (secretary of state for Scotland) and David Laws (Chief Secretary to the Treasury).
However, when you look at the finer points of the arrangement, you start to see that there are many compromises that lean in favour of the Tories. Firstly, the Lib Dems are quashing their fight against the Trident replacement nuclear missile programme in favour of additional funding investigation. They have also accepted the Tory cap on none EU immigration, a proposal which was originally met with scorn by Nick Clegg during the election debates. The conservatives will also go ahead with their £6bn public spending cuts.
Apart from the government jobs, what have the Liberal Democrats gotten out of the deal:
- More funding for the country’s poorer children
- Increased personal tax allowances for lower and mid level income earners
- Income tax threshold to be raised to £10,000
Apart from the deal breakers ironed out above there are also a few areas in which the two parties see eye to eye:
- No shift of power to the EU
- Heathrow’s runway 3 is no longer going ahead
- Identity cards will be scrapped
Perhaps the biggest shift will be the potential for voting reform that could shake out of the deal, but there’ll be a referendum before anything is finalised.
With an economy slowly recovering from a recession and unemployment at a new high, the pressure is on for the coalition government that we have all been landed with to work. If it doesn’t, we’ll be stuck with things for the next five years possibly.
