Britain's Coalition Romance at an End

A little under a year ago, David Cameron held a party at Downing Street to thank all of those who had helped the Tory general election campaign. It was a bittersweet occasion: although Cameron was Prime Minister, the Tories had failed to win a majority. In his speech, Cameron told them that coalition was actually better than a small Tory majority. For the people who had worked tirelessly for the election of a Tory government, these words left a sour taste. But in those heady, early months of the coalition, with the scent of the rose garden hanging in the Downing Street air, most observers could see what Cameron meant. The coalition was planning to address the deficit, free schools from local authority control and fundamentally reform welfare. Crucially, the Liberal Democrats were acting not as a brake against this radicalism but as a catalyst for it.