But not the people journalists mean.

Matthew d’Ancona, in his Evening Standard column on Monday, trivialised the important and necessary debates over welfare reform into a soap opera style personal battle. The Coalition does not have the luxury of choosing between cuts and reform.  Labour’s legacy of record debt and “broken society” demands that there must be cuts and reform.

Tensions during the spending review should be celebrated as a sign that the Government is facing up to the difficult choices it must make. Trivialising the debate ignores those in the real world who are impacted by the decisions being made.

Cabinet government is about discussion, argument and then compromise. No single Minister can govern every part of our complex society alone – they are in it together.

Mr d’Ancona underplayed the fact that Iain Duncan Smith argues his case from a place of authority. When David Cameron appointed IDS, he knew exactly how his think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, wanted to reform the welfare system, so it must be assumed that Cameron wants those reforms to happen.

These arguments are not about the past, they are about the future. Cuts without reform will not resolve the deep-seated problems this country faces, and neither will reform without resolving Britain’s unprecedented financial crisis. Compromise, via frank and – yes, sometimes – heated debate, is the way to achieve the right balance.

The Conservatives have just launched a big recruitment campaign, which includes many policy posts in CCHQ. This is good news. A month ago Tim Montgomerie raised concerns that the Tory Party was not giving enough thought to its own agenda or how the Conservatives will position themselves at the next election. Running a government and running for office are different activities that call for different skills. The risk of not having an effective party machine is that we stagnate, thus allow other parties, including the Lib Dems, to gain momentum before polling day. Hopefully the re-staffing of CCHQ will address the risk.

The job that most caught my eye* was Social Action Manager . The biggest problem for me in the 2010 Election was that the Big Society message was disconnected from those who were delivering it. Cameron’s centrepiece theme was rendered almost meaningless because the words were not backed-up with action. Big Society is ultimately about the ‘doing’. Many activists did not understand the idea because they had never been asked to participate in local projects, thus they couldn’t sell ‘Big Society’ to a sound bite weary public. In the 2015 election us Tories can’t just be the Party of the Big Society idea, we must practice what we preach and become a Big Society organisation.

The Social Action Manager will attempt to forge links with the not-for-profit sector and encourage constituency associations, local councillors and candidates to engage in Big Society activities. Unlike in the US, we Brits tend to be cautious about mixing politics with other activities. This attitude has helped to disenfranchise people, especially the young, from political parties. It is a lot more satisfying to put your efforts into a specialised pressure group where you can focus on achieving a specific good, compared to delivering leaflets or attending ‘talking-shop’ branch meetings.

Volunteering is often a fun, rewarding, educational and social activity. Politics in action reminds people why we need politicians and why it’s important to campaign to get good ones elected. The Social Action Manager, with the support of Baroness Warsi, should aim to redefine what being a Tory foot soldier means.

* Dear readers, if you decide to apply, please mention me on the application form so I can demand a generous headhunters’ fee from CCHQ…`

Justice Secretary Ken Clarke’s proposals for penal reform have landed him in hot water with some of the self anointed ‘tough on crime’ brigade. In a speech to the Centre for Crime and Justice recently, Clarke challenged conventional wisdom stretching back over two decades. Eschewing the ‘prison works’ rhetoric of one of his predecessors Michael Howard, the new Justice Secretary called for greater use of community service to reduce both prison numbers and re-offending rates.

Let us be clear, there is a role for prison both to protect society from some of its most violent individuals and also to act as a deterrent.

I subscribe to the view that a prison sentence should be something to fear – there should be no toleration of drugs in jail, no perception that you are met with a stay full of life’s little luxuries and life sentences for murder should mean just that. There also needs to be an equally strong phase of rehabilitation and re-education prior to any release. Recent examples have shown the perilous potential results of premature release.

Over-crowded prisons and high re-offending rates however characterise the British penal system. Whilst we haven’t quite reached the dramatic US level whereby almost 1 in 100 adults are in jail, the prison population in the UK is now one of the highest in Western Europe and the highest it has been in British history. The number of inmates has more than doubled since 1993 from 40,000 to over 85,000. 20,000 inmates share cells designed for one and since 2007 80,000 criminals have been released early to ease over-crowding. That we can’t focus our energies to imprisoning those that actually should be there and instead are releasing violent criminals early due to financial pressures is scandalous. We could learn a lot from the Dutch model which has seen both a deliberate fall in prison numbers (and an emphasis on community sentencing) accompanied by a fall in crime.

Driving the astronomical rise in the prison population in the UK  is the proliferation of custodial sentences and especially short sentences. Two thirds of those in prison are there for less than a year and the majority of those are there for less than three months. Many of these inmates leave prison for a life of unemployment, homelessness, and crime.

Many argue that prisons are increasingly no more than ‘criminal training academies’, solidifying rather than breaking the cycle of crime. Re-offending rates in this country are alarming. Over 40% of inmates will re-offend within twelve months of release or 60% of those serving short sentences. This is the so-called ‘revolving door’ syndrome as the same people pass through jail several times. Despite New Labour’s pledge to be ‘tough on the causes of crime’, rehabilitation remains frustrated by a lack of funds and prison over-crowding.

The wider social impact is a serious if under-publicised issue. An estimated 160,000 children have at least one parent in prison and are three times as likely to engage in anti-social or delinquent behaviour than their peers. 65% of boys with convicted fathers go on to offend themselves.

Clarke blames the ‘bang ‘em up’ mentality of the past two decades which if allowed to continue will see the prison population rise to near 100,000 in five years. While he acknowledges that the prevailing wisdom is not completely misguided he does challenge a key underlying assumption, namely that a correlation exists between prison numbers and crime rates. While it is true that from 1993 prison numbers doubled while crime rates halved, from 1951 to 1971 prison numbers also doubled and crime rates trebled. Not unreasonably Clarke argues there are more important factors influencing crime rates.

This clears the way for greater use of community service to deter, rehabilitate, and reduce prison numbers. This approach has senior judicial support. The former Lord Chief Justice Woolf argued in 2007 that custodial sentences should be reserved for ‘violent criminals’. Otherwise sentences should be reduced and tough community punishments applied in far more cases.

Nearly two decades since Michael Howard fired the starting pistol of a rampant rise in the prison population, and with mounting evidence that conventional ‘wisdom’ is no longer working, Ken Clarke’s considered, evidence-based intervention is highly welcome.

 Marcus Booth is a former Co-Chairman of the Conservative City Circle Law Panel

The Saturday Times magazine (link here but it’s behind the paywall) had a great article about Apple, and how all companies basically want to be the Apple of their industry. Farhad Manjoo also came up with a list of the attributes that make Apple Apple.

He notes that discipline, focus and long-term thinking are key, along with a willingness to flout conventional wisdom. He adds a fanatical attention to detail, unrelenting focus on branding (and all that that implies, not just the look of the thing), and the ability to absorb the lessons and move on from mistakes.

That all sounds pretty good to me – in fact, I’d say that all of those things are essential for political parties. Perhaps his most interesting point, though, is his final one – that Apple’s essential skill is in remixing: taking the best of what’s out there, bringing it together, tweaking it and releasing it to fulfil demands people didn’t know they had.

I know that there are going to be people who say that the Coalition has no principles, that David Cameron has sold his soul for the sake of being Prime Minister, that it will all end in disaster.  But they are wrong and I can’t be bothered arguing again about this one. What I do want to say is this: for years, I was never really a fan of Apple products which seemed a little bit style over substance and poseur for me. But then I got an ipod nano. And then an ipod Touch. And now I am kind of thinking I want an ipad.

What happened? Well… I tried them out. They worked. They did what they were supposed to. When the battery gave up after 13 months (just out of warranty – as Apple batteries do), I took it to the ipod store and they replaced it for free. I use it for all sorts of things I never knew I wanted to do.

That is what the Coalition will stand or fall on. The internal stuff – the discipline, the focus, the attention to detail and so on – will wax and wane over time, of course. But the thing that will mean the Coalition is a success is the experience that users have, just as the thing that makes Apple a success is not the white earphones or the drag and do (though those features all help). The overall delivery and additional experiences that you never thought were possible – that is what keeps Apple desirable, and that will be what does or doesn’t get the Coalition re-elected.

K-I-S-S-I-N-G

Or something. At Policy Exchange this evening, Danny Alexander looked somewhat non-plussed by Oliver Letwin’s descriptions of marriage versus friendship and their relationship to the one-party versus coalition government. But overall it was a fascinating insight into the nuts and bolts of how it’s working.

There are some key structural elements which mean that the coalition works. The way that nearly every department has a Lib Dem minister alongside Conservatives. The way that announcements are made as coming from the coalition, and ministers do not dwell on whether ideas are Conservative or Lib Dem. The way the cabinet committees are built, in a pyramid, with the ultimate arbiter at the top of the Coalition Committee (do have a look at the Cabinet Office’s excellent list of committees).  And finally, the coalition agreement itself is a useful blueprint to show both ministers and civil servants what is expected of them.

But more than that, the things that will keep this coalition performing are more emotional. The trust that built up during the negotiations, when there were basically no leaks (and what leaks there were turned out to be wrong – remember when Chris Huhne was supposed to be Education Secretary?).  The personal friendships which are being built up. The huge amount of common ground in fundamental beliefs which the parties found.

Perhaps the two most important things are external, however. The first is the national interest – it’s unfashionable to say so, but most politicians do have this first and foremost. The ultimate arbiter of whether this coalition government is a success will be the electorate in 5 years’ time. That is a great way to concentrate the mind. The second is the very fact of having to form the coalition – that means that everything has to be argued through by two parties which may have different ideas in how to achieve similar ends. That means that policies are better proofed against criticism.

I talked to a few people today about various political things, and we came to some fairly similar conclusions. That the government is moving faster and more radically than most thought possible. Yes there are some slip ups, but overall, the policies are getting put into motion swiftly and without too much fuss and that therefore they are delivering what they said they would. That while many feel that the Conservatives gave away too much to the Lib Dems during the negotiations, it was in fact the most sustainable way to achieve the right outcome. And that politics has irrevocably changed in our country.

Whether or not you think that is a good thing in the long-term, it is, I think, both necessary and desirable for our current situation.

On the way home yesterday, I went down a road called ‘New Change’ which is exactly what I voted for.