When the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties in the UK agreed to enter a coalition government following the last election, the agreement was reached in the space of a few hours and was inevitably going to be challenging at times. In any collective endeavour there is a desire to form a collaborative engagement rather than a divisive one, but the journey to collaboration is not usually one that can be completed in a matter of hours.
Journey to Collaboration
Initially, there is an identification of a reason to work together, to find common ground, and to seek to achieve apparently common goals. As the parties move into a period of conversation to discuss the 'world as they see it' and 'the world as they want to see it' those conversations are primarily aimed at seeking the areas of consensus and common view rather than the areas of difference.
Having said that, it is important to identify the areas of difference and acknowledge them, but the purpose of the conversations is to build strong foundations on which the rest of the joint working can be built. Through those conversations, areas where the two groups can co-operate, become apparent. There will be tensions at the boundaries of those areas but the ability to co-operate reinforces the areas of consensus and strengthens the bond between the parties. From there, it becomes possible to paint a consensus picture of the future that the two parties are aiming for.
That picture, that goal, then forms the foundation of the collaboration that will ensue if the goal is indeed universally accepted by both parties. Inevitably, the common goal will not be the same as either of the individual goals, a situation that requires compromise and careful planning. For each party there will be a sense that something has been lost in order to gain a bigger prize and it's important, particularly where more than one person is involved, for the bigger prize to be sufficiently attractive to make it worth losing the individual elements.
In successful collaborations that run over many years it becomes possible to embed the process of reaching agreement, gaining consensus, and building on those foundations and setting common goals as a core business skill and creating a cohesive collaborative business.
The problem in government
When we look into this process in the coalition we can see that whilst the conversations were quickly undertaken and the general agreement reached immediately after the election. In a few hours, the coalition had moved to delivering on the areas of consensus fairly quickly. Those collaborative decisions supported coalition and most members were comfortable to support the changes as there was clear delivery of both personal, party, and collective goals in the legislation that was adopted. There was a general consensus on the common goal of dealing with the deficit that remained from the previous government, although there were differences in the detail of how that was being broached.
Our assessment of the coalition is that it has failed to take advantage of the opportunities during that period of common co-operative working to build a consensus on what the collaborative goal of the coalition is. As a result, it's now facing one of its toughest periods and the decisions that it takes collectively now as a coalition will define whether it survives or whether it heads fairly rapidly towards disagreement and division and another election. The opposition during the period of co-operative working has struggled to find a message that enabled it to stick. In a coalition government that encompasses both left and right wings of the political discussion phase, it's difficult for a third party to provide an alternative different agenda that stands separate from that of the coalition whilst still being credible in the eyes of the electorate, and for the first 18 months of Milliband's leadership he basically failed to find such an agenda.
As the coalition has moved into a period of transition where it should be moving from co-operative agreement to collaborative working and is instead finding division and difficulty, the opposition is being able to latch onto accusations of being out of touch as a rallying cry for its own agenda. Some would argue that it still has nothing new to offer on a policy front, but accept that it does offer an internally cohesive, internally collaborative party that stands separate and different from the current presentation of the coalition.
The Queen's Speech
The bulk of the government's work is focused on delivering the austerity measures that enables the economy still to grow whilst dealing with deficit. All of the legislation that's required for them to do that has already completed its passage through Parliament. Todays Queen's Speech will inevitably focus on areas where new legislation is to be enacted, after all that's its purpose. Almost all of which will appear not to be related to the single biggest issue that the electorate see on their television screens every day, the deficit, austerity, the European crisis, and our own fairly lacklustre performance as an economy.
Labour will exploit the difference between a legislative programme and a business government on a day-to-day basis to its fullest extent and we can expect to see many calls along the lines of being disconnected from the electorate, out of touch, running a party agenda rather than a country-based agenda, and so on.
In both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties there are strong calls for re-establishing the identity of the party following the poor showing in the local election results recently. The risks that Cameron and Clegg face now are probably the most risky, the most difficult, the hardest to manage set of circumstances that they could face.
It's our opinion that the country needs a collaborative coalition in these times of extreme uncertainty in economic markets around the world and economic difficulties in most of the major economies with which Britain trades. It's clear that in a democracy based on party politics that a government of national unity which incorporates the Labour Party as well is not a realistic outcome from the current challenges we face, if Cameron and Clegg have courage, however, they can build such a government from within their own parties. The challenge, their challenge, is to find policies and areas of common good that both parties can engage in, support, and focus on over the next two to three years to get the right answers for the situation we're in. That requires balance, it requires political identities to be lost in a coalition of collaborative parties and it requires courage that the country will see the compromises that have to be made to achieve an effective collaboration are made with the country's interests at heart and not party interest.
It will take men of courage, and conviction, and backbone.
William Buist
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