Cosmetic coalition

When Gordon Brown was 'squatting' in Downing St. after the 2010 general election, like some paler, plumper Julius Caesar at the gates of Rome, David Cameron's very own Mark Antony, George Osborne, was busy blending a heady mix of the Liberal manifesto, champagne and a huge dose of cronyism, into a coalition smoothy. Except, the outcome hasn't actually been that smooth, has it?

From the start the coalition has suffered from a major problem with its composition, even before the seed of a policy has so much as germinated in the mind of some bespectacled technocrat in Whitehall. The top of government is simply too Tory heavy. The key cabinet posts - Chancellor (Osborne), Home Secretary (May), Foreign Secretary (Hague) - are all taken up by Tories, who also happen to be key Cameron allies. Similar is the story with the Education Secretary (Gove) and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Duncan-Smith).

During the coalition negotiations, the Liberal Democrats succeeded in getting their people in to almost every department of government, and to their credit, and the annoyance of traditional Tory supporters, they have been winning small and medium policy battles across government ever since. However, the problem is these efforts go largely unnoticed and Tory heads are taking credit for Lib Dem leg-work.

You're surrounded: Mr. Cameron should change his top team

At present, whilst senior Liberal Democrats and their policy boffins slap 'high-fives' and wax lyrical in their cliches about their policy victories, voters remain utterly oblivious to such inner-workings of government. The simple lesson for any minor coalition partner is to opt for 'depth' over 'breadth' with ministerial posts.

Nick Clegg is an anomaly, the role of Deputy Prime Minister may seem grand, but in truth he occupies a redundant and almost powerless office, and with his credibility pitifully low, he is one Liberal Democrat the country needs to see less of, not more.

House of Lords reform, Mr. Clegg's marquee legislation, and the change that he feels will see him looked favourably upon in the history books, is ill-thought through, will almost certainly be talked-out by the Commons, and the speech delivered by Mr. Clegg to champion the change was weak and strikingly naive for a self-confessed 'political obsessive'.

Furthermore, it is a subject that the public find mind-boggling, exhausting and plain boring. Should the legislation fail, which it is doomed to do, Mr. Clegg would be left critically damaged, without a purpose and vulnerable to a rival challenge. One would wonder how hard he would resist after an exhausting and embarrassing time in government.

As much as the endless re-shuffles of the Blair years are to be discouraged, the present government is tired, disliked and the deck is in need of a slight shuffle if it is to operate more effectively.

Furthermore, if Mr. Cameron is to appease the Liberal Democrats fears of a wipe-out at the next general election, which will only intensify as the election grows closer, he must lift the Liberal Democrats out of their consistent single figure opinion poll ratings, as much as it may feel counter-productive to help improve the fortunes of a rival party. The simplest way to do this is to promote several Liberal Democrats to key cabinet positions.

Vince Cable is one obvious contender, who opts to remain largely silent in the coalition at present, as is the impressive Tim Farron, who is so disappointingly wasted in the anonymous role as President of the Liberal Democrats. There is some disquiet on the Tory backbenches regarding George Osborne's position as Chancellor but Mr. Cameron will not be so bold as to remove his friend and ally to make way for Mr. Cable. Candidates for the chop are more likely to include the Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke or perhaps Home Secretary Theresa May.

Mr. Cameron has though, been determined to avoid re-shuffles thus far during his time in office and his position is unlikely to change. Sadly, the government is therefore doomed to 'succeed' in its current form.

With the aid of the ludicrous Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011, the government can rest easy in the knowledge that it could limp on until 2015 regardless. David Cameron will still be leader of the Conservative Party, Nick Clegg will still 'lead' the Liberals in his own uniquely hopeless style, and otherwise sensible people will, almost inconceivably, return hundreds of the most unimpressive individuals to parliament on election day 2015.

It would be hopelessly optimistic to think these slavishly obedient MPs will force Mr. Cameron's hand and cause enough trouble to make a re-shuffle inevitable.

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Small wonder Mr. Cameron has been keeping in contact with Mr. Blair lately. I wrote recently how there seemed to be a lack of 'spin' or 'image management' on part of the Tories, and how they're convinced their problem is with 'communicating with the public'. Here lies the problem, politics is just a game to governments these days, about tactics, maneuvering the opposition and conning the public. Perish the thought that the problem might just be their disastrous policies.

Are we entering a 'post-spin' environment or is Mr. Cameron simply out-of-touch?

Since 1997, Britons have been living in a post truth environment. We have become accustomed to politicians no longer speaking frankly or honestly, instead, day in, day out, we see realities manipulated, utterances carefully constructed, and the desired political narratives created.

It is important to first note that all governments have told lies and massaged the truth, 
John Major's 1992 administration contained liars such as Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitkin, not to mention the worst of them all, the compulsive liar, Jeffrey Archer, who lied about practically anything and everything. Before that, Margaret Thatcher lied about the sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands War as well as during the bungled Westland affair of 1986. And the lies of Ted Heath, the most useless of all modern prime ministers, seriously mislead Britain ahead of joining the EEC in 1973. 

However, under Mr. Blair, New Labour elevated spin, media management and 'being economical with the truth' to almost an art-form. Being able to untangle Labour's thick web of spin became a basic necessity if one wished to get anywhere near the truth of a story. 

Writing in The Times in 1987, Mr. Blair, showcasing his party's obsession with press bias, gave rise to the bizarre sort of moral logic that he and his party might have used to justify the unprecedented amount of lies they would go on to tell the public. "The truth becomes almost impossible to communicate because total frankness, relayed in the shorthand of the mass media becomes simply a weapon in the hands of opponents." 

Many, including myself, thought Mr. Blair's murky approach to 'the truth' would leave Downing St. along with him in 2007. Yet, the Brown years were spoiled by the type of damaging gimmicks, smears and spin that the public had grown suspicious, vigilant and guarded against after a decade of Mr. Blair. 

As George W. Bush said (or attempted to say once) 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me' 

Ironically, it has been left to the self-confessed 'Heir to Blair', Mr. Cameron, to do away with Mr. Blair's murky approach to the truth. Albeit, by default. 

Since taking office, the coalition governments attempts at selling policy to the public have been most un-Blair like, and, at times, almost embarrassing. Given their reputation as PR-savvy operators, team Cameron's use of spin and sympathetic contacts in the press have been surprisingly lacking.

Policies such as the housing benefit cap, the NHS reforms, the cut in the top rate of income tax, as well the previous u-turns on the scrapping of free school milk, the privatisation of the UK's forests, the free books for kids scheme, and the cuts to child benefit are all questionable policies that have not been aided by their rather patchy presentation. 

Similarly, the government's bungling over the potential strikes by fuel drivers today has exposed a lack of forethought about the consequences of their statements. First, drivers were told to fill up their cars, next they were told to fill up and keep spare petrol in 'jerrycans' (which have rocketed in sales) and finally, after causing absolute chaos on petrol forecourts, the government said only drivers with less than a half full tank needed to fill up, 

Is this an indicator that the government simply doesn't care about 'spinning' policy or carefully  constructing their statements? Or is Mr. Cameron simply losing his grasp of what is likely to cause a political storm?

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As if it wasn't insult enough to the families of two dead British servicemen that their loved ones were sent to their deaths earlier this week for a futile and utterly pointless cause in Afghanistan, it now emerges that the British government couldn't even bring themselves to wait until the tributes to the brave men were paid before they announced their intention to set-up a British military training academy in Qarga, west of Kabul, next year - a camp where more British men and women will suffer the same fate as the two soldiers this week and be shot in the back by the very people they are training. 

Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond counters by saying attacks of these sorts are 'few and far between' - an insulting response, given that these attacks should not be happening at all. Data shows that 1 in 7 attacks on NATO forces are now carried out by these despicable traitors.

If this academy is to go ahead, and doubtless it will, at the cost of more lives and despite military redundancies for our own soldiers, then better background checks must be performed to ensure the Afghan soldiers that our troops share dorms and weapons with are not the enemy within.