Douglas Carswell's Blog

Quit blaming Clegg

It suits everyone to blame the Lib Dems for the lack of beef on the Coalition government’s menu.   

Frustrated backbench Tory MPs can let off steam by blaming it all on Clegg and co.  Conservative ministers under pressure to implement real change can imply that, alas, it is those beastly Lib Dems holding them back.

It even suits the Lib Dems to blame the Lib Dems.  The same narrative allows them to position themselves in the eyes of their beleaguered supporters as standing up to the Tories.

The only trouble with blaming it all on the Lib Dems is that it is not true.  It is time to stop using Nick Clegg as a human shield and a readymade excuse for not making the changes Britain needs.

The Coalition ought to be a historic opportunity to fuse together the Tory free market approach with the Lib Dem tradition of political radicalism. 

We Tories wanted a “bonfire of the quangos”.  Yet it was the Lib Dems who coined the phrase “quango state”.  Between us we ought to be able to do something about it.  So why has the bonfire gone out?   We both believe in localism, so why are we changing the planning rules to impose a “presumption for development” on every council?

The Lib Dem manifesto at the last election was “committed to an in/out referendum” on Europe.  By what logic can it be suggested that it is Nick Clegg stopping us from having the policy on Europe we need?

It is not the constraints of Coalition that are preventing all this and more.  Instead the Coalition has become a convenient excuse for the failure to deliver the radical changes our country needs.

Being in Coalition gives every vested interest in Whitehall and beyond a readymade excuse not to act.     

The Coalition negotiations were presided over by the Whitehall mandarinate.  From the outset, the Sir Humphrey’s have been in a position to arbitrate - and sink initiatives and ideas they do not like.

“But it is not in the Coalition Agreement, minister” has become the template excuse for government inertia across Whitehall.

In some areas the Coalition IS managing to deliver real change for the better; Michael Gove at education, Iain Duncan Smith and Chris Grayling at social security, Jeremy Hunt with local television and Nick Herbert at policing.

But in every instance real reform is possible because the minister has worked out not only what they want to change, but how to make that change happen.  Where we have not worked out how to deliver the changes we want to make, ministers should do something about it – not blame Nick Clegg. 

“Nick won’t let us” is not a plausible excuse for failing to get to grips with immigration the way we promised.  Nor is it a reason for us to carry on with the bailout-and-borrow economics we inherited from Alistair Darling, with a bit of tinkering in the margins.  Old thinking is the problem, not Lib Dem hostility to any new ideas we are proposing .    

The Coalition is not the first centre right administration to come to office in Britain with a promise to deliver radical change.  Back in the early 1970s, Ted Heath’s Selsdon agenda offered to decentralise control over the economy much the way the Coalition came to office proposing to decentralise public services and politics.

But because he had not worked out how to make it happen, he never did.  It was left to the grocer’s daughter to deliver what the grocer promised.

Instead of implementing the changes that were needed to put Britain back on the right track, we ended up with endless U-turns.  The Whitehall mandarinate and the vested interests prevailed.

This must not happen again.

Ed Miliband as Labour leader provides David Cameron with an even greater opportunity to embark on radical reform.  It is not simply that the younger Miliband brother is seen as a policy wonk.  His policy wonkery faces backwards.    

In an age where Big Government has become unaffordable, the new Labour leader seems to simply want more government.  At a time when people want more personal control and choice in their lives, Miliband seems to oppose even the modest consumerist reforms Tony Blair made.

Having five Lib Dem ministers in a Cabinet of twenty three is not a credible reason to avoid making the change Britain needs.  Having Ed Miliband opposing us as we do so is all the more reason to be bold.

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