I was generally in favour.
My big gripes with the last government included the destruction of our human rights (I think these are a good thing), the way the economy went unregulated, but mostly the arrogance that was exemplified by “Bigotgate”.
If anyone in the Labour Party had actually had the bottle to stand up to Gordon, then I might have some sympathy. But they signally failed to get their act together. The LibDems had no option but to go with the party that had the most seats, the most votes and half a clue about who was leading them (and – as a result – what that party stood for).
At least with a coalition, there was a chance that the more rabid Tories could be moderated – and it looked at first that this would happen. But it’s starting to look a bit like whack-a-mole – as soon as one gets sorted out, up pops another one. To his credit, Cameron seems to be doing his share of reining-in (as with the milk-snatcher deja vu I’ll get to in a minute).
But the voice of reason seems to be missing. During the election campaign, I seem to recall Cameron was telling us that we need to reduce the deficit so that the burden didn’t fall on future generations. So what happens ? The cap on tuition fees is trebled, loaded into student debt.
The LibDems seem to have ended up with breaking most of the bad news, and taking the fall-out as a result. Seems they didn’t plan for Vince to be responsible for putting up the tuition fees (and I may get round to a whole post on that) …
We were told that cuts wouldn’t be determined through “salami slicing”, but what we seem to have instead is a series of ministers slashing their way through the previous governments’ initiatives, irrespective of whether they were actually working or not. Then backtracking when they actually find out what they’ve done.
So very early on, there was a backtrack on free milk for nursery children.
Michael Gove seems to be excelling himself. We’ve had a backtrack on the School Sports Partnership scheme. We’ve had a change of heart on the Book funding scheme. Of course, these aren’t U-turns …
And we can see Andrew Lansley squirming his way through an explanation of why he’s running a flu prevention ad campaign that is completely different from the flu prevention ad campaign (originally scheduled for earlier in the year) that he cancelled. Shame our hospitals have filled up in the meantime …
I’m sure there will be more to come …
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