Every marriage goes through its bumpy patches. Just ask British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and his Liberal Democratic coalition partner, Nick Clegg. They have just gone through the most serious spat since they cobbled together their civil union two years ago, when British voters removed Gordon Brown’s Labour government but didn’t give the Tories a clear mandate. The coalition is a marriage of convenience, a dynastic coupling where neither side is under any illusion that love or affection is involved.
The pretext for the current very public disagreement was a Labour motion in the House of Commons demanding an investigation into whether the minister responsible for deciding whether Rupert Murdoch could buy the 58 percent of broadcaster Sky he does not already own broke the government’s own strict code of conduct. Jeremy Hunt, the man at the center of the fight, has been shown to have made up his mind in favor before being given the job of impartially adjudicating and to have been ultra-cozy with the Murdochs, sending Rupert’s son James a high-five text suggesting that the deal was a fait-accompli. The Murdochs admit bombarding Hunt with no fewer than 788 exculpatory emails. Despite this, Cameron saw no problem with Hunt’s lack of objectivity, and Hunt has defied endless Labour calls to resign.
Clegg, who before the coalition was not deemed important enough to warrant even a Christmas card from Murdoch, spotted an opportunity. With the British public furious at how Murdoch has made a mockery of democracy by bullying and buying his way to business success, he declined to support the Labour motion. The Lib lawmakers were told not to back Cameron and Hunt. The Tories won the Commons vote anyway, as they have a few more lawmakers than Labour.
So, what was the point of Clegg’s rare display of independence? He is highly aware the Libs have suffered from putting the Tories in power. If Cameron succeeds in turning the British economy round within the next three years, Brits may well reward his party with a working majority. If the economy, which coalition policies have driven into a double-dip recession, fails to recover, the Libs will be blamed for aiding and abetting a painful experiment in austerity. At the general election in May 2010, the Libs won 23 percent of the vote. Since then their support, according to every opinion poll, has been cut in half. If an election were called tomorrow, they would suffer a profound collapse.
They need, therefore, to show voters they are not closet Conservatives by flexing the few muscles they have. It is a forlorn gambit. Everyone knows what they are up to, and few give them credit for distancing themselves from the government they are keeping in office. As Cameron put it: “To be fair to the Liberal Democrats, they didn’t have that relationship [with Murdoch that the Tories did] and their abstention tonight is to make that point. And I understand that. It’s politics.”
