coalition - yet another crisis.

The coalition is, depending on your point of view, suffering a new crisis or the start of a major meltdown. Three issues in fairly rapid succession have revealed the fault lines in the alliance – tuition fees, NHS reform and now immigration policy. All three schisms, which measure high on the coalition ‘s Richter scale, have one common feature: they have been introduced with a minimum, if any, cabinet discussion. Indeed it appears that very little ministerial consultation at all has taken place. Tony Blair may well have marginalised his cabinets; Margaret Thatcher may well have bullied them, but they did at least make attempts to ‘clear’ policy with senior colleagues on the Downing Street sofa. By-passing cabinet is a dangerous business at the best of times, but when the cabinet itself is a cross-breed of two parties and when the policies in question are extremely hot potatoes, the result of such a lack of ground preparation is potentially seismic. This clearly cannot continue. Cameron and Clegg have to adopt a more considered approach to policy making, especially when policies do not appear either in party manifestos or in the coalition agreement. Rushing through the cuts programme may have been justified, but this cannot be said of the reform issues. The Government does not have a democratic mandate for such policies and so has to create one. This can only be done either through parliament or through the cabinet system. To compound the problem, the NHS reforms were unveiled without sufficient consultation with the relevant professional groups, thus further reducing their legitimacy. Of course, if we did have a highly sophisticated and pluralistic parliamentary system (as is the case in the USA), policy making could take place in the context of Westminster. But we do not. Parliament is a legislative machine, not a policy-refining body. Time then, for the return of that old friend, cabinet government. Without it the coalition may well find itself engulfed in a tsunami of resignations. (sorry for the extended metaphor, I couldn’t resist it). http://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/Colleges/Government---Politics.aspx?mRef=CNM01.