The days of the coalition government feel long gone; David Cameron and Nick Clegg's political embrace in the Downing Street Rose Garden a fading memory. The Conservatives are alone in power; Cameron has exited the Westminster stage; and the Liberal Democrats having haemorrhaged votes and seats are back on the left.
Was the coalition government a passing aberration? Or was it something we should pay closer attention to – a hint of a new normal in British politics and policy-making?
Hugh Bochel and Martin Powell are well placed to take us through the coalition's social policies – and in many respects, the volume develops themes explored in their earlier work on the social policies of the Conservative and Labour parties respectively. The contributions are wide-ranging and largely critical: from the framework of public spending and the governance of social policy (including in the devolved UK) to all the major areas of policy.
One set of questions the book addresses is around continuity and change. How far did the coalition break with previous Conservative and Labour approaches to social policy – and to reform of the welfare state? Going forward, what are the implications for social policy of these five years of government?
Most of the contributors think this was a conservative wolf in coalition sheep's clothing (with the Tories now ‘unfettered’, as Ros Edwards puts it). Markets, individual responsibility and a more limited role for government shaped social policy. The ‘big society’ experiment is seen by them as a failure.
This was a government that sought to cut public spending; reduce the value of benefits (though not all of them); push further conditionality in welfare; replace the public sector with private providers; and take a strong state conservative approach to the criminal justice system and family policy.
The onward march of neo-liberalism, then, provides the main theme for the book. Whatever ‘third way’ elements there were, introduced by New Labour to provide something of a social democratic counter-balance to social policy, largely through increases to public spending, they vanished after 2010.
Still by 2015 government spending remained a very un-neo-liberal 44 per cent of national income – third highest in the G7. In real terms, as Nick Ellison's chapter points out, total managed expenditure fell by only 2.3 per cent, with spending protected in areas like health and education and cut in most others, including work-related social security.
This was also a social policy agenda that was broadly supported by voters, even if much of the shift in public opinion took place under the previous Labour government; and many baulked at further cuts to the welfare state.
Many of the issues in social policy faced by the coalition were, as Rob Baggott points out in his chapter on health policy, ‘challenging’: from rising demand for services and poor delivery to the coordination of public policy and increasing levels of ill health and inequality. All recent governments, Baggott points out, have faced these problems. And the coalition's job was made worse by the economic conditions of the day, its own fiscal choices and those of the previous Labour government.
This sense of perspective is useful. Neo-liberal or not, the coalition had tough choices on spending to make (and what it said wasn't always what it did); and how to improve public services in the face of growing and changing demands for these services (and tax payers resistance to higher bills). Governments the world over face much the same.
It's hard to think that as we become ever more used to making choices about our lives, question established authorities and use digital technologies to do all kinds of things, that this won't involve public policy-makers looking to markets and non-state agencies (and to the reform of state agencies) to improve the quality of public services. Badging it all ‘neo-liberal’ – and out of court - doesn't get us very far.
The view that neo-liberalism is the key to understanding the coalition's approach to social policy informs the second question addressed in the volume: what influence did the Liberal Democrats have on their more senior Conservative partners in the coalition? Did Clegg and co make a difference?
Across most contributions, the answer is not much. In some areas, such as youth policy (the ‘pupil premium’) and family policy (where they managed to ‘delay and constrain’ Conservative ministers on a tax break for married couples), LibDem ministers made a mark. In others (e.g. housing) they had none.
This lack of impact is largely put down to what got the LibDems into power in the first place. By tacking to the right, and embracing a more free market approach to public policy, Clegg and the Orange book wing of the party made ideal crewmates for a Conservative Party still under the sway of Thatcherism, it is argued. This was particularly the case with the coalition's approach to public spending and deficit reduction that shaped much of social policy in its five years of government.
Even on what on the face of it was that most progressive of coalition reforms, the launch of same-sex marriage, this is seen as an alliance of libertarian Conservative and LibDem ‘mods’ against the traditional Tory ‘rockers’ led by Iain Duncan Smith.
By focusing on the ideological dimension to politics and policy-making, how the parties actually managed to work together – or not – in government on social policy is given far less space. This is a pity. In the context of radical shifts in the British party system, the sharing of power is likely to become a more frequent occurrence. How political parties and British public administration come to terms with this will concern us more and more.
