Coalition: The Politics and Personalities of Coalition Government From 1850
Mark Oaten
Harriman House, 352pp, £14.99
More than 150 years ago Disraeli claimed that England does not love coalitions. In 2006 Clare Short resigned the Labour whip to campaign for a hung parliament at the next election, arguing that coalition or minority governments are a better method of government than the strong one-party government Britain had under Blair and Thatcher. Yet amidst growing media speculation over the possibility of a coalition government after the next election, precious little has been written about the effectiveness of coalition governments.
Like Disraeli and Short, Oaten is a politician, and just as there was a clear political purpose in Disraeli’s assertion, so there was behind this book: to prove Disraeli wrong and to provide a manual of useful lessons for tomorrow’s coalition-builders.
Oaten examines the great coalitions since the 1850s, in peacetime and wartime, looking at their achievements and failures, and comparing their effectiveness both with each other and with strong single-party government.
Unusually for such a book, the author candidly concludes the opposite of his own preconceptions. Doubtless to the surprise of his Lib Dem parliamentary colleagues, Oaten rejects the Clare Short thesis and argues a coherent case for the merits of strong single-party government over coalitions. Some of our most needed reforms have been as a result of parties having a clear mandate and confidence to drive forward a clearly thought-out programme, he argues.
For a coalition to succeed, Oaten shows that it needs strong leadership and unity around a clear purpose. That was the essence of success for the wartime Churchill and Lloyd George coalitions. In peacetime, Lloyd George’s coalition lost its unity of purpose and its record of achievement was all the worse for it. Oaten traces how all too often a government of all the talents‚ becomes a government of all the egos, weakened by an inability to take decisions.
This is a timely and readable book, written with the insights and frankness of a politician whose parliamentary career is behind them – required reading for any pundit contemplating the potential consequences of a hung parliament.