What’s next for the new odd couple of British politics?
May 26, 2010
Yesterday’s speech by the Queen at the State Opening of Parliament allowed us a first real look at how the coalition government is going to work and the type of policies they will be putting forward.
They managed to cram references to 22 bills as well as some extra issues into the eight-odd minutes of the speech and it is interesting to see whether the Lib-Con partnership has tempered the extreme fringes of each party and, more relevantly, whether this coalition will work.
A few of the bills were relatively obvious, based on beliefs shared by both parties and the majority of the public. The Energy and Green Economy will push efficient and low carbon energy production and usage, while the Freedom and Identity Documents bills offer a halt on the erosion of civil liberties through scrapping id cards and next-gen biometric passports and limiting the storage of DNA among other things.
Another couple of bills offered concrete reminders of the key issues in either party that presumably were key compromises in the debates prior to forming the coalition. Clegg gets his Parliamentary Reform Bills to establish a five year fixed-term election system as well as a referendum on the voting system. In return, the Tories get the European Union Bill which would guarantee a referendum on any further issues of power being handed to Brussels. Also for DC and the right, there was talk of a cap on jobs for non-EU migrants. Perhaps not as far as some of the Tory faithful would like though.
Other bills that drew my attention include the Academies Bill which would allow for the creation of many more academy schools, which are already controversial for their creation of a two-tier education system. Being able to opt out of local authority control to be run by governors and parents with local private sponsors does not seem fair to me as it will clearly benefit those schools in already affluent areas.
Strangely, there is a bill to decentralise some power and give more freedom on housing and planning issues to councils and to review local government finance, which sounds like the start of a shift towards devolved local government, but another bill will block the creation of single-tier councils in Exeter and Norwich. Surely a council can decide on its own structure if it is allowed more power to control housing and planning?
A mixed bag all in all and I think things will become more interesting upon hearing Osborne’s emergency budget on 22 June.
