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All very fun and, to some extent, all very unsurprising: Downing Street has always been littered with policies that didn’t make it into the statute books. But, in this case, the anecdotes are quite revealing of a slight tension at the top of government. On one side, those who Steve Richards calls the “Tory Romantics” in his column today: those Tories who, like Hilton, want to go further, faster, stronger with their reforming ideas. And on the other, those who are stopping the romance in its tracks.
We had an insight into this divide during the drafting of the coalition’s recent White Paper on public services, with the Lib Dems accused of playing the roadblocks in that case. And we will no doubt see it again and again. Indeed, Vince Cable has today been quick to chide Hilton’s thinking on maternity leave, saying that, “Steve Hilton is a fine blue skies thinker but this is, I’m afraid, not part of what we’re going to do.” It is the sort of thing might become a feature of the two coalition parties’ patter as the next election approaches: with the Lib Dems saying “look at the diabolical schemes we managed to block”, and the Tory Romantics saying “look what we might have achieved on our own”.
Because you read about coalition
Also by Peter Hoskin
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