Coalition: The Inside Story of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government

This is a very absorbing account of the Liberal Democrat side of the Coalition government that ruled the UK from 2010-15. Laws was very briefly Chief Secretary to the Treasury for the first two weeks of the government, then a Minister of State jointly in the Cabinet Office and the Department for Education, where I work as a civil servant, for two and a half years from September 2012 until the end of the Parliament. Obviously the author is an interested party, but this is by no means a crudely partisan account and he analyses the Liberal Democrats' contributions to the coalition, and their mistakes and failures fairly dispassionately. When Laws was a Minister in my Department, my own work did not bring me into regular contact with him, show more and I attended only two or perhaps three meetings with him; however, I was quite impressed in those meetings by his grasp of issues and willingness to listen to evidence, which is by no means always the case. David Laws is one of the so called Orange Book Liberal Democrats, seen as fairly right wing in economic terms (he has sometimes been called a classical Gladstonian Liberal), and therefore perhaps rather comfortable in coalition with the Conservatives, especially perhaps in a government defined by its economic goal of reducing the UK's budget deficit. But his social liberalism and internationalism and that of his Liberal Democrat colleagues distinguishes them from their Conservative partners. Laws perceptively assesses the characters, strengths and weaknesses of the two leading Conservatives in the Government, David Cameron and George Osborne, with whom he and the Deputy PM Nick Clegg got on very well, despite many differences in political instincts and priorities. A major theme of the book is the undeniable fact that, whatever achievements the Liberal Democrats managed to score by being in power, e.g. on raising personal tax allowances, green policies, the pupil premium, or infant free school meals, they gained no credit whatsoever with the electorate and were crushed in 2015, to the overwhelming benefit of the Conservatives, who unexpectedly won a narrow overall majority. Laws analyses what his party might have done differently, including on tuition fees, the issue that is often seen as having cost them a lot of support, but concludes that a loss of support was inevitable for a junior coalition partner. He is unsure about what the future holds for his party. This book was written before the EU referendum, which has given the Liberal Democrats a modest boost in support and impetus as the only significant party opposed to Brexit, but it must be dubious how this will play out in the long run. In sum, a very good read, albeit perhaps a little too long and, for me, repetitive in places, especially on some of the economic material. show less