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.

David Cameron put climate change at the heart of his campaign to transform and modernise the Conservative Party. I don’t doubt his personal commitment or that of many other Ministers and MPs. However the same cannot be said for the entire Conservative Parliamentary Party, with a significant number of climate change sceptics on both front and backbenches.
 
Not long before the General Election, TimMontgomerie, a former CCHQ staffer and editor of the influential website Conservative Home, suggested that “80-90 per cent” of my party are “just not signed up” to the climate change agenda. His comments were backed up by a poll of Conservative candidates in the 250 most winnable seats conducted through his website before the election. Candidates were asked to rank 19 different policy priorities in order of importance. Britain’s carbon footprint came bottom.
 
It may sometimes be effective to shift the focus of the argument. Those who are sceptical about climate change and the need to cut GHG emissions may still accept theoverriding need for more investment in energy efficiency, thedesirability of new nuclear power stations and even of some forms of renewable energy because both help to cut our dependence on imported oil and gas. The dangers of being vulnerable to the whims of volatile foreign regimes that may not always be friendly unites climate change sceptics and enthusiastic greens alike.
 
We must persuade the public that it is in Britain’s economic interests to move to a low carbon economy faster than other countries, not least to give us a competitive edge. This will not be easy, but if the carbon price rises substantially as the world economy recovers and other nations get tougher with emitters, then we will have a very significant advantage if we have already invested in low carbon electricity generating capacity, low emission transport infrastructure and environmentally-friendly buildings.
Low carbon products and services will be a growth market in the medium to long term, as trends in the car industry already show.
 
Now is the time to invest in research and development of the products and services that will be in demand as the low carbon revolution takes place. Clean coal in particular offers immense international potential, and the Government should continue to prioritise the demonstration of carbon capture and storage.
 
The EU has a role to play in the big picture. If aligned with either China or India, it would easily outweigh America on the global stage. Imagine a common EU/China or EU/India standard for electricity generation or for buildings. The rest of the world would have to pay attention. Of course the EU’s approach to these issues may at present be poles apart from both China and India, but it must be worth at least exploring the possible benefits of bilateral agreements with those countries even if initially such agreements were only voluntary.
 
David Cameron is inheriting a far more difficult and complex situation than anyone foresaw. When that iconic photograph was taken of him dog sledding in Norway, en route to view the retreating icebergs, nobody had any idea of the looming global financial meltdown. His green enthusiasm in the early days of his leadership proved how the Conservatives had changed but those were very different times.
 
Nonetheless there is no going back now. One measure by which his Government will be judged is whether it accelerates the transformation of Britain to a low carbon economy.

Posted by Administrator on behalf of Tim Yeo MP. Tim is MP for South Suffolk, and chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee.

The full pamphlet, Green Gold, can be downloaded from the Tory Reform Group

Yesterday after PMQs, I had a text from a VERY non-political friend who said she thought that David Cameron’s description of Raoul Moat as a ‘callous murderer’ was outrageous and went far too far for a Prime Minister.

Today, the Facebook page which caused so much of more of the outrage has been taken down – not by Facebook but by the creator of it.

I was in Starbucks today and saw a woman – I would have said pretty well-off, she was buying sandwiches and coffee and lollies for her children – put a lolly in her handbag, pass one to each of her children and say to the barista that ‘Oh I have two lollies as well.’ Well no she didn’t, she had taken three. The person in front of me in the queue pointed out that she had also taken one and put it away, and the woman laughed off how ditzy she had been.

How many of us would have thought, it’s only 40p, Starbucks make plenty of money, they factor that in? But that’s not the point. The point is that it is not acceptable to steal, and part of how shoplifters can be stopped is if those who see them step in.

It is important that people speak up when they feel something is wrong. It is also important that people feel able to speak up when they feel something is wrong.

I think my friend was wrong when she said the Prime Minister shouldn’t have got  involved in the saga of this Facebook page. I think it’s absolutely right that our politicians lead from the front, do the right thing, and encourage the rest of us as well.

There are plenty of things politicians get wrong but on this, David Cameron is  right: societal pressure – from all sorts of different directions – is what will change society. Simply passing more laws isn’t the answer, and always expecting someone else to do it isn’t either. We all have to be prepared to think about what kind of society we want to live in, and be prepared on top of that to be part of making it happen.

“Big Society” as a campaign idea did not gain much traction during the election campaign, I think for a number of reasons. It’s a big idea, trying to solve complex problems. It is not a vacuous soundbite that politicians dressed up in the clothes of serious theory, like for example New Labour’s “Third Way” pitch in 1997. “Big Society” pools together ideas and practical experiences of social civic thinkers and doers. This made it harder to sell on the door step, or in press conferences, but on the flip side it lays solid foundations for transformative government.

Another electoral problem was that the “Big Society” concept is not yet fully formed. The problems that need addressing, such as the existence of communities of the defeated, are clear and numerous. The utopian destination of facilitating respect through giving everyone the power to have a meaningful impact on their surroundings is agreeable to all. What is still fuzzy is the journey that needs to be travelled from the current directive state to the land of an enabling government. Implementing “Big Society” involves tough choices, including embracing the risk of failure, and challenging some powerful vested interests. In many ways the concept cannot be fully formed until ideas around empowering communities are enacted because fundamentally the “Big Society” idea should be driven by the experiences of those on the ground.

Lord Wei is one of the auteurs of “Big Society” ideas. He is someone worth following as the Coalition government, and ultimately we, commence the “Big Society” journey. If you are curious about this subject I recommend you read his maiden speech to the House of Lords. I have picked out some highlights below.

“On another level, the big society describes a set of policies to give more powers to people closer to where they live, to help increase the capacity and resources of civil society to take up such powers, and to encourage a sense of collective progress and momentum since it can be hard to “bowl alone”.”

“… at the heart of this debate, in my humble opinion, is not just what civil society thinks social policy should be or even what government pronounces, but a collective and very British constitutional negotiation of a partnership for the 21st century that values and combines not just the seabed, the bedrock of our public services-to protect the vulnerable-but the coral represented by the many current and future providers of those services that add variety and innovation and humanity to their delivery. Last but not least it is the very fish that feed in these waters, the local citizen groups that can extend, vivify and shape this landscape in ambitious as well as humble ways. No single part of this ecosystem can or should dominate, but by working well together each comes to form a whole that is often more than the sum of its parts.”

“There will be challenges in realising such a partnership, as many attempts to forge it before have shown both here and abroad. I list a few of the possible risks: unclear goals leading to a dissipation of effort; a lack of even a moderate amount of resource to empower scalable citizen responses; institutional resistance to the change this approach entails; the capture of new powers by vested interests that are so off-putting to the apolitical citizen; and apathy or a lack of critical mass.”

British politics is in a fluid state. Decisions and events in the next five years could fundamentally realign how power is obtained. We could end up in a four party state, where governments are made up from the:

• Conservative right/UKIP party
• Conservative centre/Liberal party
• New Labour/Democrat party
• Labour left/ Green party  

Change to the voting system 

The first-past the post system encourages the formation of parties that contain philosophies stretching over a wide spectrum. Dennis Skinner and David Miliband join together to fight Bill Cash and Ken Clarke. Controlling the destiny of our country is what they are fighting for.  Both the Conservatives and Labour have a lust for power at the heart of their reason for existence, and it is this pursuit of government that is the glue which bound collectivist trade unionists to Blaire’s ‘New Labour’ project, and now binds free market radicals to Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ coalition.  

Get rid of the first-past the post system and you may get rid of the rasion d’etre for the main parties being such wide churches. 

Existence of a coalition 

“The British people do not like coalitions as they want strong governments.” This is the often-repeated assumption you hear from the mouths of those who want to maintain first-past the post. Like all assumptions this statement is hard to prove but British political history is almost exclusively made up of governments who have a single party legislative majority, so it could be true. But what happens if this attitude changes. My reading of election result was that voters got the outcome that the majority considered to be the best option. Labour was on its last legs, a new government was needed, but many did not trust the Tories to govern on their own. If the Coalition is deemed to be a success then the electorate may vote for it again. Some Lib Dems, having had a taste of government, may want to do their best to ensure that they don’t lose the trappings of power.  

Right/Left anti-coalition alliance 

The beginnings of an unlikely, maybe even unholy, alliance between the Conservative right and the Lib Dem left is being formed. Both these groups are nervous about the amount of influence they may have in the Coalition because their support is not needed to the same extent by their leaders as it was pre-election. Conservative Home’s interesting series on the voice of the right seems to be motivated by trying to carve out a place for itself as the vocal “conscience” of the right. The inference from this series is that Cameron must listen to certain voices, such as David Davis, John Redwood and Daniel Hannan, as they represent the mythical Conservative base.  

Simon Hughes, who is very much on the left of his party, is going to use his new platform as deputy leader of the party to provide some sort of Liberal Democrat opposition. Hughes wants to retain ‘short money’, which is reserved for opposition parties, and he wants a higher proportion of Lib Dem back benchers to have a guaranteed chance of quizzing Cameron at Prime Minister’s question time. At the next election the self-styled Tory Right and Lib Dem Left may campaign against the Coalition’s record, and their honourable friends who were a part of it.  

If you add into the mix:

• social media’s ability to allow politicians to build their own brand,
• reform to the House of Lords,
• the individualistic nature of our society where people are more likely to join individual pressure groups than political parties, and
• the growth in votes for minor parties in recent elections,  

then it’s more difficult to deny that the political establishment is facing its biggest challenge since the 1920s, when Labour’s rise challenged the then status quo.