Government

I doubt David Cameron will have many better days in government than this. Considering the government cancelled a hospital project yesterday, today has passed as one long photo-op, free of incident. It began with Theresa May banning a radical Islamist cleric, Zakir Naik, displaying a resolve that eluded her immediate predecessors. The papers were full of Cameron’s ‘coup’ in Brussels yesterday; the only major news story that might have unnerved Cameron was the FT’s research into Tory immigration policy, which the FT calculates will hit growth and raise taxes. It was too esoteric to hit the TV screens, so too the cuts in arts funding. It must have been a happy breakfast in No 10 this morning.

It still looks like your TV set is on a horizontal flip when you see Cameron at the government dispatch box. Even more disorientating to see Chris Huhne on the front bench and Nick Clegg beside Cameron - making supportive facial gestures on areas he agrees with (pupil premium), and looking quizzical on areas on which he does not (marriage). Cameron’s performance shows that Britain has just had a tremendous upgrade in the eloquence of its Prime Minister: his performance was no better than as Leader of the Opposition, but still at a high standard. Without Brown’s henchmen leading Labour, their backbenchers were disorientated. But still rather numerous: Labour has 258 MPs, more MPs than any party which has not gone on to win the next election.

Is the new government marching across scorched earth?  They certainly claim so, and now they seem to have the civil service backing them up.  Speaking to the Beeb this afternoon, Jonathan Baume, the leader of a civil service union, said that senior civil servants had written "letters of direction" to Labour ministers in concern at the spending decisions they took in the final months of their government.  As Baume put it: "It's not a decision that is taken very often to ask for such a letter of direction, which is why it is regarded something of a nuclear option. So when it happens it tends to be a big spending decision, where the civil service believes this is not the right thing to do." Good to know, even if only in retrospect.

So now the coalition stretches as far as Labour, with the news that Frank Field is being lined up as an anti-poverty advisor for the government.  In itself, this is an encouraging development: Field is one of decent men of Westminster – committed, informed and passionate.  But when you look at it beside the Tories' other appointments in this area, then it really becomes exciting.  Field, IDS, Grayling and Lord Freud – all are deeply knowledgable about the welfare reform agenda, to the point where it's difficult to think of many more impressive teams in recent political history.  So perhaps there is hope for this most difficult of policy areas, after all.

Spare a thought for poor Theresa May. Judging by the reaction so far, she now faces the unenviable task of shouldering almost everyone’s preconceptions about Tory women in government – with Caroline Spelman, Baroness Warsi and the lower-profile Cheryl Gillan for back-up. She will no doubt continue to disappoint feminists and irritate reactionaries, and she will do so while responsible for the notoriously unwieldy Home Office, which has rapidly taken over from the Department of Health as the ministry where political careers go to die. Representation in politics does matter. It is not unreasonable to claim, as Katharine Viner did in Thursday’s Guardian, that “democracies simply don't work unless they represent those they govern”.

One of the most interesting questions is whether the Tories and the Lib Dems will be able to move from the talking points to the action points. Besides Ken Clarke, Francis Maude and William Hague none of the ministers have any previous government experience. They know government from the outside, from the sidelines, from parliamentary questions but not from the inside. It will be really interesting to see how the Cameron-Clegg government copes not just with the issues where they can set the agenda - like police reform - but where the Goverment is mugged daily by reality - like Pakistan or Yemen. I suspect they will find Labour acted not so much out of incompetence but in desperation. They will also find that because a government wills something does not make it so.

Much ado about this 55 percent proposal – whereby that proportion of the House, rather than just over 50 percent, would be required to vote down a government – and rightly so.  But, as so often, Iain Martin says all that needs to be said.  Here's a snippet from his must-read post: "It is rather stretching things to try and present this piece of proposed gerrymandering as 'Political Reform.' It is actually designed to ensure that even a walk-out of the whole Lib Dem parliamentary group couldn't actually bring down this government. This would weaken parliament and strengthen the hand of the executive considerably - when it is only weeks since both parties were talking of doing the opposite.

Today's civil partnership between two men who look uncannily like each other will, I suspect, be remembered as a festival of misplaced optimism. Cameron overdid it a little, making out that this was his ideal outcome. It seems rude to point it out, but there were two podiums in that rose garden because he flunked the election (see Tim Montgomerie's superlative report for details). The cost of his failure to win is having to do a deal with Nick Clegg. The country didn't vote for a new politics: the Lib Dems did worse than last time, so polls show most voters would have preferred Cameron to have formed a minority government. This is an alliance designed to stop Cameron fighting an election again soon, and repeating last week's jarring experience.

Here are some details of the LibCon deal, and my brief comments: 1. Clegg as Deputy PM. It’s a non-job, but a senior one – it means Clegg will take PMQs in Cameron’s absence, and will defend all those nasty cuts (sharing the blame for these cuts is the main rationale for coalition). This follows the 1999 Lib-Lab deal in Scotland, where Jim Wallace was made Deputy First Minister to everyone’s surprise. 2. Laws replaces Gove in education. This has not been confirmed yet, and I will not believe it until I see it. Of all of tonight's moves this is potentially the most concerning – especially for all those (including myself) who had said that the Gove schools policy was the best single reason to vote Tory.