This will be the coalition’s last full year, and it is remarkable how few people are talking about how it will all end. Last January, every conversation in Westminster was about when the two parties would disengage. Tory ministers were eyeing up the jobs that would be available once their coalition partners had left the cabinet table, Liberal Democrats mused on the ways that, once freed from the chains of office, they could demonstrate that they were a truly independent force. Now such chatter has gone. Instead, troops on both sides reluctantly accept that the coalition will continue until the election is called.
What’s changed? It’s all to do with Nick Clegg. His position is now the strongest it has been since his party entered -government, and he’s convinced that walking out early would damage the public’s view both of the Lib Dems and of coalitions in general. Not all his cabinet colleagues agree, of course. Vince Cable might prefer to leave government several months before the election, so that the Lib Dems can establish ‘equidistance’ between the two main parties. But after the job that Clegg’s allies did on him at last year’s party conference in Glasgow, Cable is keeping his head down.
Even so, you can expect the coalition to look and feel different in 2014. Clegg and Cameron will each spend more time talking about what their parties think and less about the government’s shared position. They have to show that they are governing competently together but at the same time emphasise their distinctiveness.
Emphasising distinctiveness is a more urgent matter for the Liberal Democrats. The risk they face at the next election is that voters who liked the government will back the Tories, and those who didn’t will go for Labour.
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