‘We Are All in This Together’: The Coalition Agenda for British Modernization

Abstract

Coalitions have been a relatively infrequent feature of modern British politics. When they have been formed, usually during wartime or major peacetime economic crises, and when they have endured, they have tended to be established in the month of May and, more often than not, led by a Liberal or Conservative politician (Maer, 2010). For example, during the First World War in May 1915, Herbert Asquith formed a Liberal-led Coalition (led from December 1916 by David Lloyd-George), in which the Conservatives provided eight out of 21 Cabinet Ministers, and which endured, despite the interruption of the 1918 General Election, until October 1922 (Morgan, 1978: 25). Similarly, in May 1940 Winston Churchill formed a Coalition National Government, comprising ministers from all three major political parties, which lasted until the landmark General Election of May 1945 (Taylor, 1978: 85). To this extent the formation of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat (hereafter Con-Lib) Government in May 2010, against the backdrop of the worst financial crisis since 1929, following 22 days of frantic negotiations, marked a return to a longstanding British political tradition of forming coalition governments during periods of austerity.