Bernard Ingham: Coalition honeymoon is history and divorce is drawing near

After the shenanigans surrounding the Liberal Democrats’ weekend conference and the manoeuvring ahead of next week’s Budget, it looks to be going the way of all peacetime coalition flesh – not just withering but suppurating splenetically on the vine.

Not that after the early honeymoon there was much to keep the Tories and Lib Dems together. In normal times, the Lib Dems hate the Tories with all the irrational fervour of the bearded and sandaled Left and the Tories dismiss the Lib Dems as “pavement politicians” nurturing every local grievance where they aren’t in office without any guiding philosophy.

One of the seven wonders of the modern world was that the two were able quickly to cobble together a coalition agreement.

This became ever more wondrous to behold when it led not merely to a sustained attempt progressively to eliminate a shocking £150bn deficit but also massive reform of the NHS, education and welfare systems.

Many more homogenous governments have attempted less in the first flush of youth.

It is perhaps as well that Chris Huhne, that most divisive of politicians, has been removed from the scene to await criminal trial. Otherwise, the air would by now be blue – or certainly a darker shade of azure than it already is.

Let me briefly recap where the marriage has got to this week. David Cameron is in trouble with his flock for giving way too often and too much to the Lib Dems – so much so that many wonder whether he really is a Conservative at all. Dammit, some are even resigning party posts because of his wetness.

Nick Clegg has never really recovered from ditching his opposition to university tuition fees and is now roundly blasted for undermining his fellows with the late idea of a “tycoon tax” in their Robin Hood mission to raise the tax threshold, impose a “mansion tax” and stop the Tories from scrapping the top 50p tax rate.

Danny Alexander, Lib Dem Chief Secretary, is accused of “going native”, with only one ambition in life – to please Chancellor George Osborne. The poor chap is also dismissed by the snobs as a mere press officer, promoted far beyond his status.

And all objective observers of this example of marital bliss wonder how Vince Cable can still be Business Secretary – repeat Business Secretary – when he criticises the Government’s economic policy as “piecemeal”, as unclear how we will earn our living in future and having “no compelling vision of the way the country is heading.” Cable stands instantly condemned out of his own mouth of personal incompetence and treachery.

He could only survive in a coalition – and probably knows it,

Leave aside the much amended Health Bill over which the Lib Dems were induced by Shirley Williams more or less to see sense at the weekend, what is fascinating is that neither budget cutting nor radical reform has caused the custard pies to fly. It is the opinion polls.

The prospect of near-annihilation at the next election has driven the Lib Dems obsessively to “differentiate” themselves from the Tories. This in turn has put Cameron into conciliatory overdrive. It has also made the coalition seem not just like a pair of ferrets fighting in a sack but a whole tribe of the cannibalistic brutes clamping their teeth into each other.

If governmental internecine strife puts the voters off, the only amazing thing is that Labour are not out of sight in the polls. That they aren’t tells you what a mess they are in, too.

So is the coalition doomed to bitter divorce well before its statutory five year term in 2015? It is a brave man who would bet otherwise. But when is another matter. I doubt whether it could survive the parties fighting each other in a by-election where the Tories and Lib Dems are the main challengers.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are destined for oblivion if they walk out before it is clear we are get ting on top of our debts. Labour cannot afford an election. And the Tories, with budget deficit reduction not even half way there and health, education and welfare reforms to prove, know they need somehow to keep the coalition going for a bit, short of selling their souls.

One consolation: we shall probably be cured of coalitions by 2015.