Why we should not be too happy about Dominic Cummings' departure from government

As Dominic Cummings carried his cardboard box out of Number 10 Downing Street, the gloating started. It came not just from the usual suspects, those who bemoaned the exit of the UK from the EU and his role in it. They were joined by some on the opposite side of the Brexit battle. Cue Bernhard Jenkins, Conservative MP, an arch Brexiteer, who celebrated Cumming’s exit from Downing Street during a BBC interview saying that (paraphrasing) things will hopefully get back to normal now. Interestingly he did not stop there and noted that, during Cumming’s reign, the Cabinet contained surprisingly few Brexiteers and he hoped that this would now be reversed. 

 

Dominic Cummings on his way out
YUI MOK/PA WIRE

This makes me think… did we get Cummings wrong? By we, I mean the ones on the ever so cosmopolitan, liberal, Europe loving side. Let’s take a step back and look at this from a wider angle. Cummings is often credited for his firm anti-European commitment. But what we may have overlooked with the Brexit battle indignation still red hot in our eyes, is that Cummings’ preference for Brexit was a means, not an end. Cummings had a keen eye for the discontent of substantial parts of the public with the establishment. We may question the validity of this term, but the millions of voters who turned out on the day of the referendum knew exactly what he was talking about. 

 

For anyone who lives in the North of England, that establishment, real or not, cuts across party lines. In fact, it combines positions as contrary as Labour in North West city councils and traditionally Conservative ones in Yorkshire and the Humber. Conservatives, rightly or wrongly, were loathed for their close contact with money and business, being seen as traditionally favouring those who already made it. Liberals, on the other hand, were perceived as hypocritical as those articulating the benefits of globalisation were often employed in white collar jobs, drawing on European money or benefiting from middle class council jobs with little impact on real lives. Just ask yourself: How many ‘development officers’ were funded by European Convergence funding (my own hand goes up!) and how little impact did they have on suffering communities beyond creating another cushy office job? 

 

Cummings’ strategy was to bundle those discontented voices and give them a purpose. We may disagree with the thrust of that purpose but the fact of the matter is that he achieved something many on all sides of the political spectrum had long called for: a revolution in democratic participation. People who never voted before used to ballot box to send a signal to politicians across the political spectrum to say they had enough. We may scoff at the simplicity of the political message. But the fact is that Cummings managed what others had long failed at. He revived moribund political life in the UK and drew people into the political debate as never before. 

 

I can hear the shrieks of horror. But at what cost! you may say. So? The fact is that we will all do better if our public debate has more voices in it, not fewer. Cummings has demonstrated to all of us the rewards of listening to the disadvantaged, the ones who stopped shouting for help long time ago. We may not like what we hear, but forcing us to listen to the ones in need is at the heart of a healthy political discourse. It is however, also challenging our misconceived democratic credentials that are often based on the exclusion of those we do not agree with. 

 

And so we return why we should not gloat about Cummings’ departure. His desire to make us listen to those we disagree with should be reason enough to us in the North West of England to regret his leaving. It may signal a retreat to the status quo ante. And that can only be bad for people living in a corner of England that receives a fraction of the investment that London gets. 

 

That’s why I worry when I hear Bernhard Jenkins and others, on the liberal side of politics, rejoicing that things will go back to normal now. Where I live, in Walton (Liverpool), this ‘normal’ has not served the people well. It is officially the most deprived constituency of England and Cummings was the first one to be interested enough to listen up. That does not make him a crusader for the dispossessed. But it makes him a champion of democracy. The irony! 

 

Where did it all go wrong? The Labour Party after the second coming of the Messiah

As Labour MPs pick up the pieces after their battle with the left wing extremists led by their leader and his enforcer John McDonnell, it may be time to take stock and assess where to go from here.

The (second) election of Jeremy Corbyn (to his supporters, the second coming of the Messiah) demonstrates a deep shift in party politics. The question is whether this transformation of the Labour Party heralds a fundamental change in the attitudes of the wider electorate as well, signaling the long expected ‘move to the left’ once announced by Corbyn’s predecessor Ed Milliband.

There can be no doubt that societies in the developed world have undergone a significant alteration of the political radar since the economic crisis in 2008. What used to be an attitude to wealth and income inequality best described by Tony Blair as ‘relaxed’ made way to a vibrant debate on social justice. At the forefront of this debate is the issue of wage stagnation since the 1990s in the US and  as Thomas Piketty argued, the growing income inequality fuelled by rising income from assets.

Where the picture veers into the strange is when we look at the responses to the crisis by the individual parties. Centre right parties moved gradually to the centre and tried to develop policies to counter wage stagnation, broadly trusting in the power of the economy to lift everybody’s boat at some time.

The left of centre parties, many of which were in fact in power when the crisis hit, showed a staggering lack of ideas. Gordon Brown’s inaction at the moment of economic disaster was symptomatic. Tired of Brown’s dithering, his chancellor, Alistair Darling, had to take the reigns and protect the banking sector by bailing out some of the largest lenders. The next two years were largely wasted with inactivity by the Labour government. Not a single policy was launched by the Brown government to counter the growing wage gap. It was as if Labour politicians who had started their tenure in 1997 with so much gusto were frozen like rabbits caught in the headlights before the car bumps them off the road.

Following the 2010 election, the Conservatives continued to move into the centre with modest welfare reforms under George Osborne, the introduction of the national living wage and fiscal consolidation. The next five years are generally acknowledged to have been a wasted opportunity for the Labour Party. Under Ed Milliband’s leadership an endless number of policy reviews was conducted with very little outcome or impact. As the next election was nearing, Labour struggled to put a manifesto of pledges together that amounted to a coherent programme for government. Instead it opted for an oversized tombstone inscribed with several vacuous statements that prompted ridicule and laughter in the wider public.

Thus, in a sense, Jeremy Corbyn’s election to leader was actually the first proper response of the Labour Party to the economic crisis and its related problems such as wage stagnation and income inequality. And this is where the story assumes surreal proportions. Instead of embarking on a profound reassessment of Labour policies and a wider debate on how to tackle social injustice under conditions of low productivity, how to address the disappearance of low skilled jobs and the rise of the professional classes under conditions of a fiscal straightjacket that is likely to continue for the next decade, Labour members opted for a type of unrestrained sloganism, a simplistic populist left wing version of Donald Trump. The most notorious aspect of this move to populism is the striking absence of any hard thinking about policies, the slavish adherence to abstract slogans, and a determination not to let reality impinge on the simplistic worldview those slogans purport.

An important side effect of this return to the 1970s is that Corbyn’s ideas show little traction with the working class voters he pretends to represent. As so often before, the proletariat appears to refuse to play along with the Marxist leaders. Corbyn acolytes appear to be mainly young middle class voters who should have little investment in a Marxist worldview that assigns to them a diminishing political role as the proletariat ‘gains class consciousness’. But then, as so often, paradoxes abound in English Socialism, once led by an aristocrat, Tony Benn, who virulently campaigned against the very educational standards he benefited from.

Where does that leave the political landscape in England? Labour’s move to the extreme left may just open up some electoral space for moderate social democrats and liberals. LibDem’s leader Tim Farron seems to sense that when he appealed to disenchanted moderate Labour voters to join the Liberal Democrats. It is customary in the British media to write off the LibDems but the party still has a significant number of councillors and some parliamentary representation (at Westminster and in Cardiff), more than other fringe parties such as the Greens and UKIP. Councillors are usually the knights in shining armour when it comes to trudging through the English rain to deliver leaflets to potential voters or placing calls to the ‘pledged voters’ to go to the polling booths. So, the LibDems are electorally in a better position than the Greens and UKIP.

The biggest threat to Conservative rule is however amy come from inside the Tories themselves, through a prime minister who ditches the moderate compassionate Conservatism that served David Cameron so well in the last 6 years. Part of the reason why Labour shifted to the extreme left was that the Conservatives firmly occupied the centre ground with progressive policies once popular under Labour, such as national minimum wage, welfare reform and the academy programme. The biggest mistake Theresa May could do is to vacate this centre ground and encourage moderate Labour politicians to formulate their own policies. Let’s hope she is a closet Cameroonian.

The Trident trap

In his book The Conservative Heart, Arthur Brooks writes that those politicians win who 'scramble the categories'. What he meant is that political parties are perceived to be strong or weak in certain policy areas. To set out to reiterate their strengths is unlikely to add any new converts to their cause.

Conservatives are thought to be competent in running the economy and reducing a budget deficit. Labour politicians may be seen to be compassionate and concerned with social justice. The trick to win elections is not to focus on your strengths, Brooks argues, but to stray onto your opponent's field and steal their arguments.

The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn is moving further from this advice by the day. Whilst under Blair the party consciously placed their tanks on the lawn of the Conservative Party, under the present leader the party is withdrawing rapidly into its comfort zone. Part of this started under Miliband already. But Corbyn and his comrades are going even further. They are not just deliberately negating any policy aspirations in traditional Conservative areas such as the economy, but Corbyn also pushes issues that are of little importance to the wider public.

Political scientists call this the low salience trap. Members of all political parties are animated by certain issues that have symbolic significance for them and sustain their mobilisation strategies as the elections get close. The Conservatives have Europe, the left wing of Labour has Trident and NATO membership. The problem is that none of these issues have much currency amongst the wider public. Whilst they agitate a small minority of party members, the issues have so-called low salience amongst the electorate as a whole. Winning elections is predicated on reaching out from their own narrow party membership base to non-typical supporters and rehearsing topics that fail to captivate the wider electorate's imagination is unlikely to achieve that.

In essence, effective party leaders do not cultivate issues that have totemic meaning within the narrow membership base but actively seek out to neutralise these topics. Corbyn may currently enjoy the support of most of this members. But staying within the comfort zone of left wing activism is unlikely to produce electoral success.

The end of UKIP

The UK general election delivered several earthquakes at once. So far, most of the commentariat focused on the second largest party, Labour, and its demise in Scotland and England (incidentally, Labour also lost long held seats in the Labour heartland of Wales).

Yet, UKIP was also thrown into turmoil in the aftermath of the election. Nigel Farage, true to his word given prior to the election, resigned from the leadership, only to be acclaimed again as the new leader by the party's national executive. 'Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!'

Whilst Farage himself is likely to survive this self-inflicted de-thronement, the chances of survival for his party in the long term look marginally more bleak. It appears to me that UKIP, despite netting an unprecedented number of votes, has only one way to go: downhill.

The reasons are manifold but the central issue is salience. Political scientist regularly establish rankings of issues in people's minds through polling evidence. Whatever comes high up on the list has high salience, i.e. has the capacity to sway people's votes in future elections. The issue UKIP is most associated with is the European Union and immigration from the European Union. As part of a 'de-toxifying' effort, Farage clearly distinguishes between immigration from the EU (uncontrolled, hence bad) and from overseas (controlled, hence good). This means the party has consistently focused its policy attention on the EU and is wedded, for good or ill, to the European issue.

Evidence from polling however also consistently shows that Europe itself ranks low on people's minds, in other words, Europe has low salience. Once politicians are seen to be addressing the European issue (renegotiation of benefit tourism and gaining approval for changes through a referendum), voters' attention to Europe is likely to decline even further. I have previously argued that the dominant mode of thought for British voters about Europe is one of benign neglect rather than exasperation as to any alleged lack of urgent action.

This spells problems for UKIP. Being asked at Question Time what the purpose of UKIP could be once the referendum is done, Farage pointed out that the raison d'etre of Scottish Nationalists was similarly questioned after the Scottish Independence referendum but they seemed to have survived it rather well.

Yet, as Farage is undoubtedly aware, the SNP always had a proper agenda for social and economic change. Their purpose did not exhaust itself in bringing about an independence referendum. The reason they are in government in Edinburgh is exactly because the policies they formulated relate to a broad range of issues with high salience for people across Scotland, from unemployment, poverty to health care. For all its willingness to change, UKIP is still a one man show and a one issue political party. That's why it is hard to see it making inroads with voters beyond 2016. GE2015 might just have been the last squeak of the UKIP mouse.

The move to the left that never happened

When Ed Miliband was selected as the new Labour Party leader, the cameras picked up his brother David mouthing to a colleague: 'He will crush and burn.' That's exactly what has happened. So where did it go so wrong?

Part of the problem was that Miliband's analysis of post-crisis Britain was fundamentally wrong. Miliband thought that the country has moved to the left. He took the chit chat about inequality in academia and the Westminster village as reflecting support for socialist principles. He was wrong and anybody who wanted to listen carefully two or three years ago, could have known this. The second miscalculation was that Labour believed their own rhetoric that the Conservatives had moved to a soulless ghoulish right of the political spectrum. Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite all the noise from the Polly Toynbees in the intellectual elite, the election has shown that policies of Tories resonate with people in the electoral centre ground.

The fascinating thing is to step back and look at the defeat of Labour in a wider (European) context. The party may lick its wounds for months to come, and may shift even more left as a consequence, yet if they afford themselves a good look across Europe they would see that any social democratic party that relinquishes the centre ground loses elections.

Today, it may look like a disaster has befallen Labour, but my feeling is that even more pain will be felt until they challenge the Conservatives in the centre ground.

The most boring time in the political cycle

I admit that I am a bit of a policy wonk. Questions about what to do with public money, who gets what and when, are infinitely fascinating to me. My suspicion is that I am not so much gripped by the mundane fights for resources, but more by an instinctive feel that most issues of public policy are ultimately unresolvable. Still, the debate about what's the best solution to a tricky problem is exciting stuff.

Yet, whilst I am glued to the BBC Parliament Channel as other people are to Wolf Hall or Game of Thrones, election times are an utter bore to me. It's not that this general election is one with the lowest stakes (what's the difference between Ed Ball's and George Osborne's budget plans? Answer: 0.6 per cent!). And one with the silliest drama: Will the Greens get one seat or two? Does Miliband have two kitchens? (who knows... who cares...) What really annoys me is that general elections are basically times of careful choreography and control, rather than genuine political debate.

Pundits called psephologists (is that a rude word?) tell us that most people switch on to party political broadcasts only in the last two weeks. By then I have well and truly switched off. Trotting out well rehearsed formulae about who means catastrophe or salvation in whose book are as exciting to me as watching a wrestling match between Ham the Clam and Chilly McFreeze (apologies to pro-wrestlers named such). So, there we are: as the electorate finally wakes up to political debate, the real debate about policy has long been had.

The final blow in the theatre called GE2015?

So, can somebody please let me know when this spectacle called general election is over and we can talk proper politics again?

What drives Douglas Carswell?

The Conservative Party is enjoying some good polling results this week and its members left Birmingham with smiles all around. Buoyed by a powerful speech from David Cameron and some tax cutting promises, the faithful departed to their constituencies with a spring in their step.

Things looked quite different only a few weeks ago when the newspapers were full of doom and gloom for the main governing party. The main reason were two high profile defections of Conservative MPs to UKIP, the party that flourishes on the margins of the political spectrum. The case of Mark Reckless, the copy-cat defector, is less controversial, mainly because Reckless's constituency is probably within reach of the Tories to retain. Douglas Carswell's defection however is a painful loss to the Conservatives, not least because Carswell is an articulate politician and a sharp mind, which makes you wonder whether or not he could be the canary in the mine.

However, here are some reasons why Carswell's defection will come to nought. First, UKIP's chances to gain a seat at the next general elections are thought to be approximating zero, if the bookies and election observers are to be believed. Whilst UKIP attracts plenty of disenchanted Tories (and some Labour voters), the electoral system is such that even a 15 percent swing to UKIP wont deliver sufficient votes in any single constituency to sweep them onto the green seats in Westminster. Things would be very different with proportional representation but first past the post will reliably swallow up any widely distributed yet shallow support for the party.

The other reason why Carswell's defection will remain an aberration however lies in his own motives. The BBC recently ran a town hall style debate with all candidates in the Clacton-on-Sea by-election and some voters. The question that hit home most of all came from a young woman. Why, she asked, if Carswell is so fed up with party politics, he would not run as an independent? Carswell's response was surprisingly weak, given that he built the argument for his defection on displeasure with party politics. He replied that Britain needs change and only UKIP can deliver that change. That's a tall order indeed. How a party can deliver change that has next to no chance to get its politicians elected next May  remains unclear.

Carswell's real motive may in fact not have much to do with party politics but with a simple calculation about his own political future as an MP. He could easily have waited until next May and sought a seat to represent UKIP somewhere in the UK at the next general election. However, this way he would very unlikely be selected for Clacton-on-Sea, a seat in which he has a solid 12,000 vote majority. Chances are that he would have to fight in a constituency with minimal chances to be returned to Westminster.

That is not the case of course if he defects and forces a by-election early, as he in fact did. He was automatically selected for the constituency for UKIP, standing as the incumbent MP.

Whilst his chances to be elected as the first UKIP MP are therefore quite good, the long term prospects to be an effective MP for Claton-on-Sea are dire. He is likely to be the only UKIP MP for the foreseeable future, so all bets are on that, sooner or later, he will return into the Tory fold.

The benefits of coalition government

As a German I have always been quite comfortable with coalition government, unlike most people in this country. Indignation about broken electoral promises never resonated with me, given that the main  benefit of coalition government seems to be a need for compromise that often weeds out the nuttier promises made in the heat of the electoral battle.

As the present coalition government edges to its final days in the UK, the 'play fights', as Andrew Rawnsley from The Observer calls them, increase. They are in essence the separation rituals of two partners that need to differentiate themselves from each other whilst at the same time trying to celebrate what they achieved.

Whatever its accomplishments, there is one advantage of coalition government that is rarely discussed. It's the fact that both partners are in a learning experience, coming into direct contact with other opinions and views on how to run the economy (and the country) without having the privilege to reject other perspectives out of hand. In other words, coalition government has a disciplining effect on all partners, forcing them to listen and to learn.

One area which demonstrates this increased capacity to learn under the conditions of a coalition government is taxation. In 2010, the Conservatives were steadfast against increasing the personal tax allowance whilst Lib Dems made it one of their most prominent electoral pledges. Two years into the coalition government and Chancellor George Osborne publicly commented that he wished this had been a Tory pledge all along. The Tory support for the increase of the personal tax allowance became so strong that Lib Dems felt miffed about it and kept pointing out to anybody who wanted to hear it that this was originally their idea.

There may be some disadvantages about lifting more than 5 million people out of tax altogether, mainly relating to the fact that modern societies are based on the contributory principle, for which taxation is the main conduit. But overall, there is now only one party that does not support a further increase in the personal tax allowance, the Labour Party. How Labour politicians square this with their avowed ambition to do good for the lowest paid is beyond me, but it seems that the two coalition partners have got it. Sometimes it may be a good thing if you are forced to share power.

Why UKIP will win the European Elections in 2014

The elections to the European parliament couldn't come at a worse time for mainstream political parties. Whilst the Labour Party under Miliband are desperately trying to move the public debate to the 'cost of living', the coalition parties would like to glow about their economic track record as the first green shoots are beginning to spring.

Europe however is the white elephant in the room and neither Labour nor the Conservatives can hope to gain anything from the coming European elections in 2014. The only party that is bound to shine is UKIP, the strongly anti-European party that has consistently made the case about the drawbacks of European integration.

In the best of moods - Nigel Farage

Many pundits predict that UKIP will win most votes and emerge as the strongest party. As Europe is gripped in anti-European rhetoric from left to right, the next European parliament looks going to be an interesting one with anti-European parties making up a substantial minority.

The fascinating aspect of UKIP's rise however is the paradox that fuels its potential electoral success. UKIP's mantra has been that Europe has become the predominant (undemocratic) force in the lives of British people. The reason many Brits will vote for UKIP rests exactly on the opposite calculation. Many British feel that they are free to vote for the 'Kippers' exactly because their vote is so ineffectual. Few people in this country care (and I cannot blame them) who represents them in a Brussel's parliament that resembles more a talking shop than a properly legitimated legislature.

The main reason is that, contrary to life on the continent, Europe is far away from the British way of life, and seen more as a nuisance than a benefit. That's partly because Britain is an island but it is also because it is only partially integrated into the European treaties. Anybody who has gone recently through British immigration when coming off a plane can attest to the strange feeling, that Britain is somehow part but not quite inside the EU. What is missing is the 'lived experience' of Europe as it presents itself on the continent, from missing borders to integrated local services in the heart of Europe.

Paradoxically, that's the source of UKIP's electoral chances. Despite Farage's rhetoric, it is the irrelevance of Europe, its undemocratic institutions and its clownish 'president' Van Rompuy that makes the European Elections in 2014 the perfect target for voters who want to send a signal to all established political parties.

The dim lights of Europe - Van Rompuy and Ashton

So, I am convinced that UKIP will win the European Elections, just as it will sink without a trace again in the General Elections in 2015.

The transformation of the LibDems

As the end of 2012 is approaching fast, it may also be a good time to look ahead to the next general election which is only 2 years away.

The most interesting issue since the start of the coalition government has certainly been the steady decline of the LibDems. In a way, this was predictable. Having been in opposition for more than 80s years, the party had become used to play all the cards at the same time. Life in opposition was not just comfortable, it also shielded them from difficult truths and some of the LibDems were masters in avoiding difficult decisions.

The peculiar political constellation in the UK with two dominant parties and practically no fourth political party worthy of the name, afforded the LibDems a dual role, straddling parts of the political spectrum that had little in common. On one side, LibDems served as the repository of disenchanted Labour voters with strong left leaning tendencies. On the other hand, the party also accommodated more libertarian views and an economic liberalism usually only found amongst (liberal) Conservatives.

This dual role was never going to be sustainable once the LibDems entered government and it was the (more centrist) convictions of Clegg and the LibDem leadership which carried the day. The left leaning wing of the party was horrified by the decision to enter a coalition government with the Conservatives and most of those voters (and some activists) moved back into the Labour fold. But what does that mean for the future?

Given that the LibDems share some of the responsibility for the welfare reforms and the austerity budgets in the last two years, it is hard to see how Clegg and his wing of the party can perform another u-turn and enter a coalition with Labour in 2015. In a sense then, the transformation of the LibDems into a centre party with strong preferences for economic liberalism is complete. The reflects a fundamental shift in the leadership of the party as well. Market-orientated economic liberalism is probably were Clegg's heart is.

It leaves the political spectrum in a fascinating bind. Although there is the theoretical possibility of a Lib-Lab coalition, chances are this is not going to happen. If neither of the two large parties achieve a majority in 2015, the only option is a minority government of Labour or Tories (whoever has the largest number of seats in the House of Commons) or another version of the Con-Lib government.

Currently the decline of the LibDems leaves Labour in the fortunate position to enjoy a boost in the opinion polls. Yet their glee at the demise of the LibDems is premature. Their own increased popularity is  only because those LibDem voters who were quite close to Labour have now migrated back to it. To continue to attract them, Labour however needs to keep articulating a left-leaning agenda which in turn will repel those voters in the centre of the spectrum without whom Labour cannot win the next election.

Of course, politics is never just a strategic game, but rather a question of tactics. Much of what shapes the political debate today, is probably forgotten when voters will finally make their way to the polling booths in 2015. Yet the political constellation poses a challenge not just to LibDems but to Labour as well.

What has the coalition achieved?

The coalition government under David Cameron has had a rough time recently. Surveys show that key ministers are deeply unpopular amongst the British people and the poll figures for both parties, the Conservatives and the LibDems, took a beating since the Rose Garden photo op in 2010.

Happier times! Cameron and Clegg in the Rose Garden of Number 10 in 2010

There have also been rumblings amongst Conservative members of parliament about the leadership qualities of David Cameron, prompted by a perceived advantage given to LibDems in key policy areas. Nick Clegg and his parliamentary colleagues, so the complaint goes, determine policies to a far greater extent than they should. Given the widespread disenchantment with the coalition one might be forgiven to ask: what is the point of the coalition? Has it achieved anything so far?

The most effective opponent of the coalition government is not Her Majesty's Opposition, yet perhaps time itself and the tendency of all electorates to indulge in selective memory. It is easily forgotten how radical this government actually has been, much to the consternation of some former Labour ministers who had similar plans for transformations of public services, yet either never got round to implement them or were blocked by Gordon Brown.

Just reviewing a list of recent reforms reveals the magnitude of the policy programme of the current government. Fundamental change and reforms have received legislative approval in education, health, constitutional affairs and welfare.

Take welfare for example. James Purnell was the one but last Labour Welfare Secretary and his plans for welfare reforms approximated closely those of the current postholder Ian Duncan Smith. When in power, Labour had a keen awareness that the current trajectory of welfare spending was unsustainable in the long term. Ian Duncan Smith, starting in 2010, implemented a radical shakeup of the welfare and benefits system which, for the first time in more than 30 years, involves the re-assessment of benefit recipients for payments.

Despite some criticism from disability rights organisations the reforms seem to be largely in tune with the views of the British public and there seems to be widespread consensus that benefit payments require better targeting at those in need. Ian Duncan Smith carefully built the case for reform and is about to implement it, ceaselessly reminding reform opponents that simply continuing to increase welfare expenditure is not an option and may exacerbate inbuilt injustices.

In other words, he managed to locate the current reforms in the wider context of equity and justice, as well as present them as largely continuous of previous postholder's intentions. Similar feats have been pulled off by the Education Secretary Michael Gove, who argued that his education reforms are in essence an extension of the academy programme started by Labour under Tony Blair.

Yet, how truly radical the policy agenda of this government has been is only revealed by looking at those areas that have little resonance with the British public. It is in matters such as constitutional affairs that investing political capital rarely pays off and hence little progress is often made over decades. Shortly after coming to office, the coalition legislated for fixed term parliaments which removed the prime ministerial prerogative to set the date of the general election, something not even Labour was ready to give up.

After only two years, the record of this coalition government compares positively with Tony Blair's first term, even though he always regretted not having adopted a more radical approach when coming to power. Yet as selective as collective memory might be, it is also usually arriving at a more balanced appreciation of achievements as time goes by. John Major's government, though deeply unpopular at the time, might be a case in hand. Major's term in office is now seen as laying the foundation for the unprecedented economic recovery in the second half of the 1990s creating the space for the expansion of public expenditure under Labour. In this sense, Cameron and Clegg may have their best time still ahead of them.

Louise Mensch to quit as MP

There is little else that can be said for Louise Mensch's decision to quit parliament than that this is a serious loss to the political life in Westminster. Mensch has brought qualities to politics that are often absent from other parliamentarians, such as eloquence, a sharp intellect and an admirable sense of impartiality as the member of the Culture Commons Committee investigating the phone hacking scandal.

She gained a high public profile very quickly after entering parliament in 2010 mainly because of her outspokenness on media and gender issues. Whatever her political loyalties to the Conservative Party she was certainly one of the greatest assets David Cameron could muster in wooing more moderate members of the public and Mensch played, inadvertently perhaps, a critical role in de-toxifying the Conservative brand by offering a different public appearance to the stale old male party hierarchy. 

One of her most memorable moments came when she defended the decision of the Conservative members of the Commons Culture Committee not to support the highly biased and partial report into phone hacking. The intemperate language of the report and the lack of evidence to support one of its conclusions led Mensch and other members of the Committee not to endorse it. The refusal of the Labour MP Tom Watson to amend one passage of the report, largely because of personal vanity, did serious damage to the impartiality of parliamentary committees. In contrast, defending her position on Newsnight, Mensch was balanced, fair and sharp, which provided a real highlight of political decency and honesty. 

Mensch's decision raises the question however why few people with similar intellectual abilities enter politics. One reason may be that politics is in fact a difficult and undervalued (yes, underpaid) occupation. The workload (of up to 60 hours a week) can be taxing and few people of high calibre with a professional background find this attractive as politicians' salaries in the UK are low compared to business or remuneration in the civil service. Add the unpredictability of the job and you get an unattractive package all around that offers little to intellectual high flyers like Louise Mensch.