Feuds, rows and cover-ups: It’s real politics
DAVID LAWS has no right to claim full credit for his brilliant book, Coalition. The clue is in the opening lines which thank Nick Clegg for ‘access to his private papers and records’. You can say that again. It turns out crafty Clegg kept a diary of his five years as Deputy Prime Minister, and here it is.
Together with Laws’ own meticulous notes, the pair have blown the lid off what really went on in the Coalition.
No made-up tosh about pigs’ heads and cheap abuse as a substitute for genuine insight.
This is the real thing: page after page of first-hand accounts of rows, feuds, and cover-ups involving Cameron, Osborne, Johnson, May, Gove and the rest from two Lib Dems who found themselves in the thick of it.
It is full of surprises: who would have thought Yorkshire pudding Eric Pickles could make Cameron storm out of a meeting like a stroppy teenager? The Coalition led to a Lib Dem electoral massacre: their 57 MPs were slashed to just eight. Laws was one of the fallen. Yet he does not allow it to taint his judgment. Indeed, there is touching respect and affection for Michael Gove and Oliver Letwin, who provide laugh-out-loud moments.
And Clegg’s assessment of Cameron and Osborne is as sharp as it is unexpected in its conclusion.
‘Cameron has a quicksilver mind and lots of emotional common sense, but is obsessed by the Press. He ducks and weaves and always believes he can get himself out of a tight corner. One day he won’t.
‘Osborne is surprisingly proimmigration for a Conservative, thoughtful about Europe, tolerant and metropolitan in outlook. I’ve never seen much evidence he cares about the poor, but there is a core of belief there to engage with. The more I deal with him, the more I respect him.
‘As soon you checkmate him, he changes his position and says “Let’s cut a deal?”. He knows the electorate don’t love him and probably never will.’
Laws’ robust defence of the Coalition is to be found in the book’s epigraph from Machiavelli: ‘The Prince who walks away from power walks away from the power to do good.’
Laws says his party spent too long walking away from power. ‘We achieved more in five years on education and fighting poverty than our party had done in opposition in a century. The Tories always look after the rich: we forced them to think of the poor. When we did, we had to bite our tongue as they shamelessly took credit for it.’
Laws vented his frustration by writing the book. ‘When history is written by the winners, you don’t get the whole truth.’
Clegg is planning his own worthy tome on ‘the political lessons of the Coalition’. But if, like me, you think plots and personalities are as important as policies in understanding the way we are governed, this book is for you.