What Has Really Happened
This country has a Coalition Government. Statistics and historical parallels fly thick and fast. Those of us enthralled by the process of its making have spent several days in front of our TV sets staring at doorways until deep into the night. Earnest and tight lipped negotiators came and went. Commentators talked of agreements being ‘hammered out’. At last triumphant, but politely restrained, LibDems poured through a doorway into the darkness here, while philosophical Tories poured through another, there. We were all past caring where. A deal had been done and approved.
In the morning it was Downing Street and the most famous Door of All. Along comes Nick. Dave is on the steps waiting. Hugs and stuff and then to business. We remain cynical perhaps. We still don’t get it. Then it is the Rose Garden. Sorry that is the White House. Here it is just the Garden. Suddenly before our eyes. The two of them together. Every correspondent who bore witness tells of it. There was a political earthquake.
It was all at last clear. All those meetings were details, necessary, but a sideline. The meetings where It All Happened were in secret, only rumoured. They were between Nick and Dave alone. And in those meetings they discovered something about each other. Their politics, their aspirations and their sense of direction for all of us were identical. Cameron was a Lib Dem. Clegg was a Tory. Or the other way. Because in their terms both are the same.
This is not the Liberalism of Ashdown nor the Toryism of Thatcher. Nor is it the Social Democracy of Jenkins, hijacked by Blair.This is a New Politics, Clegg’s words but used by Cameron. The word Progressive was everywhere. This new political grouping commands a majority of 82 seats and a majority of 5.4 million poular votes. It has chemistry, freshness and focus. It knows what it must do. Moreover it has a moderate majority within itself. Both leaders know that their nutters of right and left are marginalised.
The great figures of British political history of the last century who stand out for the change they wrought in the alignment and direction of their parties are LLoyd George, Attlee, Churchill, Thatcher and Blair. Not all did well with the change they wrought. We must wish upon Dave and Nick that their historic endeavour succeeds. We all depend upon it.