Rue Britannia

Tory-Lib Dem coalition is reflection of the mandate

Most Britons deeply rue the fact that they are headed for a coalition government, with many predicting various dire outcomes like a downward spiral into a Greece-like economic crisis and sundry political disasters. History suggests that they shouldn’t be so apprehensive. Since the end of World War II, most of Europe’s major economies have been governed by coalitions — Germany, Spain, Belgium, Italy, France, the Netherlands and Ireland to name a few — with no noticeable harm in the quality of governance. Yet, even as the British intelligentsia is veering round to acceptance — and urgently urging government formation to stave off a market crash in the face of a rating downgrade threat — many Britons view the prospect of a Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition with distaste and alarm. Certainly, given the polarity of outlook between the two parties and personalities concerned, the nightmare of a non-performing government appears strong. The Conservatives under David Cameron favour a diluted version of Thatcherism with a robust revival of privatisation (including of the five-centuries-old Royal Mail), tax breaks for the rich and cutbacks on welfare spending. Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems — often disparagingly referred to as the “long hair and sandals” party — has a diametrically opposite agenda, including a pro-immigration and pro-Europe outlook, both anathema to a country struggling with high unemployment. Making the twain meet in terms of viable policy may look difficult but such a coalition would better reflect the plurality of the election result. Politics is the art of the possible.

It is, of course, easy to see why the British people dread coalitions. They haven’t really known one (bar, of course, the war-time National Government under Winston Churchill and a Lib-Lab pact under James Callaghan). Most Britons who voted last week have been used to “strong” prime ministers with distinct policies for over two decades — from the Thatcherite era (1979 to 1990) to Tony Blair (1997 to 2007), so coalitions for them seem to spell weak governments. In that sense, Britons are right to be worried about the nature of their government going forward, given the record fiscal deficit and the real danger of a rating downgrade that the country faces. But there is nothing to suggest that Britain was better governed under one-party governments. Indeed, despite her muscular foreign policy and brashly pro-market economics, Thatcher’s 11-year premiership was marked by a high degree of unemployment and social unrest. Blair, of course, will forever go down in history as George W Bush’s “poodle”, pushing Britain into its highly unpopular military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for following high-spending policies for which his successor Gordon Brown is partly taking the hit. Also, as an analyst in the Financial Times pointed out, it is worth noting that “one EU country that resembles the UK in usually having a government with a clear parliamentary majority is Greece, the recipient of a ¤110 billion financial rescue plan designed to avoid a debt restructuring”. Indeed, Britons worried about the consequences of coalitions would do well to look to India, the world’s fastest-growing democracy. Since the 90’s, the country has been governed by a series of rainbow coalitions that delivered significantly faster economic growth than the mostly one-party domination of the Congress in the decades after Independence. The irony, of course, is hard to escape. Newly independent India looked to Westminster as a model for government. Now, Westminster could well turn to Raisina Hill to figure out how coalitions can work effectively.