Posted by Dr Andrew Connell
Look at how the Cabinet seats have been distributed between the parties. All the big and totemic spending departments- Health, Education, Defence, Home Office, Communities and Local Government, Work and Pensions, and Transport- are in Conservative hands. This government is going to have to make big spending cuts and this will give the Conservatives the maximum of control over them- although it is the Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Laws, who will have the blood on his hands when the cuts come.
Now look at where the other Lib Dem ministers are. Vince Cable’s appointment to Business was perhaps more or less inevitable once it is accepted that he was not going to be Chancellor, and Energy and Climate Change, which Chris Huhne has been given, was an important department in the last government. But Deputy Prime Minister- Nick Clegg’s post- has usually been a more or less ornamental role and although the Scottish Secretary (Danny Alexander) may achieve a certain importance as a liaison with the SNP government in Edinburgh, since devolution the job has not been the almost mini-premiership that it once was.
These are the first peacetime Liberal/ Lib Dem cabinet ministers for nearly 80 years, and they are no doubt pleased to be there. But the jobs they’ve been given emphasise their party’s junior role in this coalition.
