Cameron PM of Lib/Tory Coalition

With David Cameron becoming the new prime minister of Great Britain last night, many are wondering if the Conservative coalition with the Liberal Democrats will last. How can two parties, so dissimilar, ever cooperate together? More importantly it may be hard to see what the Liberal Democrats ever get out of such a coalition; you can bet a lot of Liberal voters will not be happy with this outcome.

The fact is, and this must be stressed, that this is not a Conservative government in power; it is a Liberal Conservative government. In order to examine how far the liberal influence will have on the Tories in the next five years, there are three key areas which can be highlighted. That is, providing this strange coalition sticks.

The first is to realise that at least now we have a stable government, with the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives combined, equaling over the number of seats needed to form a majority government. This was one of the main reasons both parties joined together; with more arguing and instability in government, the economy is not going to recover any time soon, and the general public will probably not take too kindly to a second election within several months. As both leaders, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, have stated, a stable government is first and foremost in the national interest.

Secondly, there are now Liberal Democrat MPs in the cabinet. This is probably the closest Nick Clegg could ever hoping to achieve to getting the top spot; he has now been appointed deputy prime minister. Alongside this, four other of Clegg’s colleagues will also have the opportunity of helping to run the country, including Vince Cable as Business Secretary, Chris Huhne as Climate Change and Energy Secretary, David Laws as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Danny Alexander as the Scottish Secretary.

Lastly, and perhaps most key, is that this coalition has caused the Tories to rethink and change a lot of their original policies in their manifesto. All of the Liberal Democrats key four manifesto pledges have been pushed through, causing the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, to redo all of his previous sums with the inclusion of the Liberal Democrats fairer tax system. There is no doubt that the majority of the Tories policies have been liberally influenced, with Cameron shelving original policies like the inheritance tax.

So with all of the main liberal policies in place, a big influence coming from the cabinet, and a lot of Tory policies being reformed, it is clear to see that we are not living under a Conservative government. The Liberals have certainly shifted the Tories further left on the political spectrum, but how long this will last is another issue. The hardest part to achieve a working government was unfortunately not the joining of these two political parties. It is what is still to come, and what turning events could split the two once again.