Politics: childrens centres coalition conservative education election government labour lib dem liberal democrats maternity care Politics schools spending cuts tory
by Rob
We have a government at last - it’s just…
So after pretty much five days of uncertainty we now have a government and a new prime minister, they are however Tory. With the Lib Dems support in coalition the two parties will set about running the country with the Labour party in opposition. Nearly all the tabloids seem to be rather smug about the whole thing.
The saving grace is that we as the voting public didn’t vote the Tories in as a majority government and that they had to join into coalition with the Lib Dems. And whilst I don’t agree with everything that the two parties offer, each tempering the others views can only be a good thing - though having said that it remains to be seen how much the Lib Dems can stop.
I doubt they will be able to stop the huge spending cuts that the Tories seem certain to implement, I can’t see how they are going to push through the savings that they want without cutting frontline services - or at least making front line services work harder on background things to effectively cut them. I can only hope that amongst other things it isn’t good bye to the childrens centres that Libby so loves going to and that the Maternity services in this area don’t suffer as it should serve as a model for other areas that don’t get the same level of care. That schools will have better support from the parents to continue offering the level of education that they do now. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that Labour had everything right but they did a lot of good in their 13 years in power - let’s hope the Tories don’t dismantle it.
The coalition is new ground for the UK and maybe it will work out but with such major differences in the idealogy between the two parties is seems odd that they were even talking in the first place. However agreement has been reached and we have this government until the coalition breaks down - when will that happen? I wonder whether it will be the first time that the wishes of the Lib Dems are really put to the test.
We shall see…
Good Hunting
That is true, it’s just that I didn’t think that the two parties shared enough common ground to make a lasting deal. Hopefully I’m wrong and the Lib Dems can temper the changes that the Tories want to make until Labour can get back in.
I certainly see it as positive that the Lib Dems are there in coalition rather than one of the less stable options, I guess only time will tell.
Interested that you mentioned the difficulty of forming a coalition between ideologically different parties. One of the major problems of majority rule is that typically once per generation we vote in a new government who set about reversing the work of the previous government. If anything coalition rule should prevent this rapid change of direction by forcing parties to work together and find a more moderate common ground.