COALITION TENSIONS

Does Chris Huhne’s resignation damage the Coalition?

In the short term, it may strengthen the partnership between the Conservatives and Lib Dems. The Climate Change Secretary, who had to resign on Friday to stand trial, was unpopular with his Tory counterparts in the Cabinet. He has an abrasive style, which makes him easy to dislike. His departure and replacement with the more emollient Ed Davey will improve day-to-day relations at ministerial level.

But Mr Huhne’s departure comes at a crucial juncture, when Tory MPS and strategists are thinking about the future of the Coalition and debating how the Tories should approach the next election. A lot of Tories remain suspicious that David Cameron and his advisers prefer a coalition to the Tories governing in their own right.

Surely David Cameron wants a Tory overall majority?

In theory, yes. Although if it turned out be a small overall majority the Cameroons would fear the ability of the Tory party to hold the leadership hostage on subjects such as Europe. The difficulty for Mr Cameron is that many of his MPS see things quite differently and explicitly want the leadership to start working out how the party can be decoupled from the Lib Dems and eventually govern in its own right.

The situation is aggravated by the approach taken recently by the Lib Dem leader. Nick Clegg’s team in Whitehall, led by senior aide Richard Reeves, have looked for areas where the Deputy Prime Minister can show that he stands apart from Mr Cameron on populist issues such as reducing taxes for the low-paid. If Mr Clegg is staking out distinctive positions on behalf of his party, ask Tories, why isn’t Mr Cameron doing something similar to make the case for voting Conservative? What are the pressure points? The Coalition involves too many compromises. Europe is the main cause of tensions, and those pressures will only intensify. Tory MPS and ministers want more radical reform of the European Court of Human Rights, and see decisions such as allowing Abu Qatada, the radical cleric, to stay in Britain as an affront. Then there is closer integration in the eurozone, which many MPS wanted to use as a chance for Britain to negotiate a looser relationship with Europe. None of that is possible in a partnership with the Lib Dems. Expect to hear more calls from Tory MPS for the Conservative leadership to start adopting robust positions. Can the parties keep the peace? For now, yes. But it would become fraught if Chris Huhne were convicted and sent to prison. There would be a by-election in Eastleigh and it could be particularly explosive. Eastleigh is a key marginal of the kind the Tories have to take from the Lib Dems. The Tories would expect their leadership to throw everything at winning.

An influential Tory MP said: “There is no question, there cannot be any electoral pacts. There is no way the party would countenance standing aside or going easy.” Another described it as a “potential Coalition breaker”. He added that the leadership should rule out a pact for a general election, as it would help the Lib Dems keep seats: “If we helped them in a general election they would still run off and do a deal with Labour later.” My money is on the Coalition breaking up at some point in 2013. Shouldn’t Cameron just go for an early election? He should start preparing for it. The polls are good for the Tories because of Labour weakness on the economy and Ed Miliband’s problems in getting himself established.

Of course, the conventional wisdom is that Mr Cameron cannot go early, thanks to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which was introduced as part of the Coalition Agreement. It was designed to reassure nervous Lib Dems, who feared being dumped at a time of maximum advantage for the Tories.

But the importance of the measure is somewhat overstated, particularly by Lib Dems. It does remove a Prime Minister’s right to go to the Queen and unilaterally demand an election. He needs twothirds of MPS to vote for a dissolution. But in practical terms, that means that if a great issue – such as Europe or economic reform – was at stake, then a Prime Minister could quickly put his call for an election to a vote in the Commons. No leader of the Opposition would conceivably have his party vote against an election. If he did, it would be a politically suicidal denial of the electorate’s chance to decide.

If Cameron had the will to be bold and lay out a distinctive Tory agenda, he could take it to the country at the right moment. It is time he started preparing to do just that. Iain Martin is a leading political commentator