Cameron says he wants a full coalition with the Liberal Democrats, which is sensible since Cameron lacks a majority of seats in Parliament. It’s to his advantage to have the LibDems bound to the Tories so they don’t walk over the first disagreement. The LibDems will need to be very careful.
First, if the government manages to last for a full term, the LibDems risk being reduced to irrelevancy. The New Zealand experience has been that minor parties in a coalition tend to disappear—literally or figuratively. If they become too closely identified with the government, voters will often ignore the minor parties in the election.
But another big issue for the LibDems is, can they really trust the Tories? The Conservative Party has steadfastly refused to back proportional representation or any other electoral reform. They know that Duverger's Law suggests that a First Past the Post system like Britain’s tends to favour a two-party system, while proportional representation tends to favour a multi-party system. While the law isn’t absolute, there’s enough common belief in it to make major parties resist proportional representation.
The UK’s Labour Party also wasn’t a fan of proportional representation, but agreed to it to try and win a coalition with the LibDems. Cameron responded by promising the LibDems a referendum. That’s something that could be easy for the Tories to put off, even though electoral reform is the main issue separating the LibDems from other parties.
But what of the Tories themselves? Have they really evolved beyond Thatcher? It’s difficult to tell. In Thatcher’s time the Tories pushed through Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which was intended to “protect” children from school literature “promoting” homosexuality. It was particularly heinous because it equated gay people with paedophilia, it seemed to prevent teachers from doing anything to minimise anti-gay bullying, the language implied that homosexuality was a “choice” and it put the government’s support behind homophobia.
The Labour government sought to repeal Section 28 against fierce opposition from the Conservative Party. In 2000, David Cameron, then an unelected member of the party, attacked the Labour government's plans and said then-Prime Minister Tony Blair was "anti-family", accusing him of wanting the "promotion of homosexuality in schools". In 2003, as a Conservative Party MP, Cameron pushed a party amendment to basically keep most of Section 28. When Labour finally succeeded in repealing Section 28, Cameron was conveniently absent.
On the other hand, in 2009, Cameron was Leader of the Opposition and formally apologised for his party having introduced the law. He called it a mistake that had been offensive to gay people. As recently as January of this year, Cameron re-stated that and proposed to change Conservative Party policy to push the teaching of equality in schools.
Good then, right? Not so fast. A woman described in media reports as “rising Tory star Philippa Stroud” was an unsuccessful Tory candidate. What makes her significant is that she’s credited with shaping the social policies of the party—despite having founded a church to “cure” gay people by praying away “demons.” If this woman is really one of the out-of-sight powers of the party, they have a lot of work to do.
It’s fair to say that I’m not a fan of any conservative party in any country, and the UK’s Conservative Party is not one I’d vote for. Hopefully, they’ve grown beyond Thatcher and really have moved into the modern age. If not, that could prove another barrier to the LibDems supporting them for full term, and that could mean early elections.
The next few months will be very interesting.
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