Consolidating the Coalition

14 Sep 2010

Shane Fitzgerald

The Economist's Bagehot columnist has an interesting blog today looking at the prospects for the UK's coalition as it faces into a bout of ferocious spending cuts. In it, he notes that serious people close to Cameron are advocating an electoral pact with the Liberal Democrats as the only way to respond to a looming crash in the Government's popularity levels.

In short, there are big hitters in both coalition parties who think that the era of one party rule in Britain may well be over, at least for the Tories. It is fair to say that an awful lot of MPs and certainly party members accept nothing of the sort.

The stability and future of this coalition are of central interest to anyone trying to discern the contours of British – and indeed European – politics over the next five years. But if the boosters of a British "new politics" are correct, then its evolving dynamics could have consequences that reach far beyond 2015.

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