Is the Coalition Collapsing?

The Liberal Democrat leader and deputy Prime Minster, Nick Clegg, has finally announced that House of Lords’ reform has been abandoned by the coalition. Reform of the Upper House has long been a dream of the Lib Dems, so losing it has caused a lot of anger in the Liberal Democrat party. Nick Clegg speaking yesterday said that the Conservatives have “broken the coalition contract”. As a result Lib Dems will not back the boundary changes that the Conservatives wanted. The new boundaries would cut the amount of MPs by 50, from 650 to 600 and favour the Conservative party. This news has delighted Labour, expected to lose out the most from the new boundaries.

But what does this mean for the coalition? Well we already know that it is one of the weakest British governments in years, Tony Blair was Prime Minister for eight years before he suffered his first bank-bench rebellion in 2005. On the other hand David Cameron has suffered two back-bench rebellions since 2010. A third rebellion could occur over the issue of gay marriage, although it is unlikely to be as big as the first two. This is the first time that one party has refused to abide by the terms of the coalition agreement and will likely cause a rift in the cabinet and between the back-benchers of the different parties. This is a major headache for the government as now both parties have broken a psychological barrier; neither will have stuck to the coalition agreement. Now that it has been broken on these two issues, what could be next? The NHS reform bill is not quite finished yet, could the Liberal Democrats block it? What about the issue of gay marriage, will this cause more Conservatives to rebel? We won’t fully know the fallout from yesterday’s news, but know this: it was a huge turning point in the coalition government.  

Nick Clegg leaving the press conference yesterday
Source: Telegraph