Abstract
This chapter examines the strategies of unity and distinctiveness employed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats during the bargaining stage and shortly after the formation of the Coalition. The first section outlines the parties’ manifesto pledges in the areas of higher education, constitutional reform, Europe and foreign policy. In doing so it highlights the points of overlap and division, and considers how these were resolved in the Coalition’s Programme for Government. The chapter then analyses the rhetoric of senior Coalition politicians, showing that they mobilized the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility to foster ideological identification. The partners also appealed to the ‘national interest’ to quell intra-party dissent, and they employed identification through antithesis to unite their audience against the ‘fiscally irresponsible’ Labour Party.
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Notes
- 1.
Laws’s account is based on transcripts and detailed notes of the meetings, and the accuracy of his recollections is verified by others involved in the negotiations (2010: 9–10). The chapter draws primarily on this text though, as far as possible, only verbatim quotations from the coalition talks and intra-party debates are included in the analysis. For verification purposes, these are triangulated with other sources.
- 2.
The other ‘red line’ issues for the Liberal Democrats were the Pupil Premium, tax cuts for low earners and ‘action to restore the public finances and create a sustainable economy ’ (Laws 2010: 88).
- 3.
The argument that AV is a form of first-past-the-post was also made by Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg (Wilson 2010: 162, 207), lending support to Laws’s account of the Liberal Democrats’ pre-election strategizing.
- 4.
On the framing of the 2008 global financial crisis, see Hay (2013).
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Atkins, J. (2018). The Formation of the Coalition. In: Conflict, Co-operation and the Rhetoric of Coalition Government. Rhetoric, Politics and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31796-4_2
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