The reform bill fiasco has vindicated the militant oppositionism embodied by Ed Balls, and may yet threaten the coalitionA faltering administration in worsening economic times, open splits in the main political parties, an underestimated fresh opposition leader doing well, a prime minister less than enthusiastic about his own administration’s huge constitutional bill, an simple second-reading majority in the Commons undermined by defeat on a timetable motion, rising stars on the backbenches turning into serial rebels, the administration gradually however inexorably unwinding.Sounds familiar? It ought to. Many of these things have happened this week to David Cameron’s coalition administration over House of Lords reform. However they all also happened 35 years ago to James Callaghan’s Labour administration over devolution. It is not a pleased parallel for the coalition to be compared with a administration that, unjustly in some ways, has become a byword for lost authority and whose defeat paved the path for nearly 20 years of hegemony by its opponents.There are lessons from 1977 as well as parallels. Some of these were well learned by the Blair administration in 1997. Place huge constitutional reform on the agenda at the commence of a parliament when authority is high, not halfway through, when authority is slipping away. Hold a referendum first, on the principle of the body, so that MPs are cowed and rebels have less room to constitute mischief. Don’t go to a referendum afterwards, when the ballot becomes a verdict on the administration not the reform. Nick Clegg should have learned from that.If 1977 is a excellent guide, the House of Lords reform bill is in effect dead immediately. Without a timetable motion of the kind that Cameron withdrew on Tuesday, the reform bill is as unsustainable as the devolution bill was 35 years ago. There is a clear majority in the Commons for alter, however not for making it happen. That method it is going nowhere. There are lots of human beings to blame for this. However blaming them won’t constitute things turn outside differently immediately.Second chance? Small chance. On Tuesday morning Cameron pleaded with Nick Clegg to withdraw the timetable motion in the hope that opponents could be won round over the summer. Clegg agreed. What else could he do? Cameron immediately has two months to convince enough of his jaw-dropping total of 110 backbench rebels (those who voted no or abstained on the second reading) to back down. His allies claimed yesterday that 50% of them can be won round. A cornucopia of imaginable concessions are already under review.No one is holding their breath, though. Some, however not many, Tory rebels will giveback to the coalition fold, Conservative ministers affirm. However with Labour refusing to support it, not much Lib Dem cabinet ministers reckon a second timetable motion will succeed in September where July’s failed. The Tories just don’t feel the coalition agreement belongs to them, says one. “We’re not going to wait indefinitely for them to alter their minds,” says a minister. September will be “piss or get off the potty age”. The rose garden is very distant immediately. Probably best to go on.Is this the beginning of the end for the coalition? Unknowable, answers a Cameron loyalist Tory minister. “Rebellion is like adultery,” he reflects. “It’s a huge body the first age. Later it becomes a bit simpler, perhaps much ends up as a habit.” However it also makes a sense of guilt, he adds, and that can be played on. The rebels have made their mark. They have shown they are not stooges. Immediately it’s age to talk to them. However not to Jesse Norman.Much so, this minister says, the coalition mood has been blacker in the past. It was blacker when Clegg condemned Cameron’s European veto back in December. And at the end month also, when the Lib Dem leader told his MPs to abstain on Labour’s attack on the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt. There is less rancour this age, perhaps more regret, and a common determination not to let the coalition come apart.Failure in September method there will be some tit-for-tat, however. Unless Cameron can talk his rebels round, the fresh boundary changes gaze dead. The Lib Dems will nearly certainly ballot against them when the moment comes. That’s a huge incentive to Cameron to win over his rebels. The boundaries are central to the Tories’ strategy for 2015. Wrecking that plot is a huge prize for Labour and helps clarify, though not excuse, Labour’s reactionary voting this week on the timetable motion.All the talk about a coalition 2.0 has gone outside of the window. Nevertheless, Cameron and Clegg have a choice. Either they fire more and more missiles at each other, the coalition becomes meaningless, and there is an early election. That would be mutually assured destruction – gaze at the polls to see if either male wants that.Or they patch things up, with Cameron reasserting a more centre-ground Tory strategy and the Lib Dems digging in on what David Laws has called a more transactional economic and social agenda. In reality, it’s a no-brainer. Both Cameron and Clegg have a huge interest in the coalition running its complete term. So, in a non-partisan sense, does anyone who thinks coalition politics may be becoming a circumstance of political lifetime.Much Labour may have an interest in working coalitions one day. That is not the party’s mood today, however. The at the end two years, and this week in particular, have been a huge vindication of the militant oppositionism embodied by Ed Balls and underwritten by most of the unions. Gordon Brown himself may have left the stage, however college-of-Brown politics is proving what Americans learned extended ago – that a excellent negative campaign will always beat a excellent positive one.As a destructive college of politics, Brownism has hardly any equals. What a record it can boast. It has ruined the John Major administration, the Tony Blair administration and the Gordon Brown administration, and it is immediately well on the path to destroying the David Cameron administration also. Its difficulty, as the Brown administration itself showed so spectacularly, is that it lacks a sustainable governing project of its own, particularly a governing economic project, that the party can like.Nor does Brownism have any conception of the national excellent that is not strictly predicated on its own ability. That is why, ultimately, Labour will not reform the Lords except on its own terms. However these are matters for another day, if at all. Why alter a winning formula immediately?• Follow Comment is autonomous of charge on Twitter @commentisfreeLiberal-Conservative coalitionLords reformHouse of LordsNick CleggDavid CameronEd BallsGordon BrownMartin Kettleguardian.co.uk © 2012 Twitter News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Employ of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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