By Sam Macrory - 6th May 2011
The story is an easy one to write. An appalling set of local election results, a miserable loss in the referendum on AV, and an outburst of post-polling recriminations point to one thing: the end is nigh for the coalition government.
Defeated Liberal Democrat councillors, cruelly discarded after years of tireless grassroots toil, line up to call for Nick Clegg to either quit as the party’s leader or lead them out of an their unhappy partnership with the Tories.
But those disgruntled demands will fall on deaf ears. Very soon it will be almost impossible for the coalition not to survive.
Next Tuesday the House of Lords turn its attention to the report stage of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. Fiery rows over whether parliaments should last for four or five years are a given, but don’t expect the Bill – steered through by Lib Dem and Tory whips – to fall.
If Conservatives were to rebel, and be allowed to do so, then Downing Street’s thinking would be clear: a snap election is approaching.
But that isn’t going to happen. The Bill was in the coalition’s agreement, the nearest thing it has to a manifesto, and then the Queen’s Speech. And, once the Bill becomes law, then any coalition MP who desired an early break up of the coalition relationship will have missed their window.
For a general election to take place before the fixed date, either two-thirds of MPs would be required to vote for the dissolution of Parliament or the government would need to lose a vote of no confidence with an alternative government not formed within 14 days.
In other words, nobody is going anywhere until 2015, or 2014 at least. At least theoretically. Vernon Bogdanor, in his latest tome on the constitution, notes that a government could potentially fall at its own choosing and trigger a general election.
If the Lib Dems were to quit the coalition and vote against their former Conservative colleagues on a motion of confidence, then their combined votes – with Labour – would almost certainly see the government fall.
David Cameron would have 14 days to cobble together a working majority, as would Ed Miliband with whoever – let’s say Nick Clegg for argument’s sake – was leading the Liberal Democrats, otherwise the country would be gearing up for a general election.
In theory Cameron, should he want to call time early on the coalition, could engineer a defeat in a motion of no confidence too. But given that the coalition, as Cameron tells us endlessly, is the selfless act of two parties coming together for the national interest, the idea of the prime minister - or his deputy - bringing about its downfall for an individual party’s benefit is, in practice, highly improbable.
And that is, surely, a huge relief for the Liberal Democrats. Today’s local election results leave the party’s local base around the low marks of the early 1990s, and if a snap election were called now it would face annihilation.
The 15 per cent share of the vote would leave two-thirds of the party MPs out of work, though one insider suggests that only Charles Kennedy, with his distant Scottish seat and high personal ratings, would be guaranteed survival.
Working closely with the Conservatives may leave their party membership – and a furious Lord Ashdown – feeling uncomfortable this morning, but there is nowhere else to go.
Instead the party will hope that the overall strategy of the coalition government somehow plays itself out: two years of hard and fast spending cuts, a spirit-lifting Olympic Games, and then a smattering of tax cuts (for the Tories) and giveaways (for the Lib Dems).
It involves a lot of hope – that the economy will recover – and now, after the personal recriminations of the referendum campaign, just as much trust. The coalition government will soon be built to last, but it is beginning to resemble a couple which is locked in a loveless marriage and unable, despite their children’s hopes, to divorce.
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