Cameron as Prime Minister: The Intra-Executive Politics of Britain's Coalition Government

Abstract

Forming a coalition involves compromise, so a prime minister heading up a coalition government, even one as predominant a party leader as Cameron, should not be as powerful as a prime minister leading a single party government. Cameron has still to work with and through ministers from his own party, but has also to work with and through Liberal Democrat ministers; not least the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. The relationship between the prime minister and his deputy is unchartered territory for recent academic study of the British prime minister. This article explores how Cameron and Clegg operate within both Whitehall and Westminster: the cabinet arrangements; the prime minister's patronage, advisory resources and more informal mechanisms. Cameron and Clegg both possess institutional and personal resources, but Cameron remains the predominant resource-rich actor, so at this early stage in the coalition government we can observe that no formal, substantial change in the role of prime minister has been enacted. Cameron's predominance, by leading a coalition, is partially constrained by Clegg, but he too constrains Clegg. This prime minister, then, can be predominant even when he is constrained in significant ways by the imperatives of coalition government. Cameron is presently no more constrained than a prime minister who is faced with a preeminent intra-party rival with a significant power base. ________________________________________________________________________

The Limits to Prime Ministerial Autonomy: Cameron and the Constraints of Coalition

“…Here both parties sought to function as a largely harmonious entity (something which prompted the odd out of touch Tory to suggest the parties should fight a subsequent election on a joint ticket (Boles 2010) and both parties maintained a good working relationship (Hazell and Yong 2012). In this period Cameron, subject to the Lib Dem veto on matters not contained within the coalition agreement, was thus no more constrained by Clegg than he would have been by an intra-party rival (Bennister and Heffernan 2012).…”

“…The ways in which the government operates at its highest, deliberative echelons, how it manages its inter party differences, has changed little in formal terms from the early days of the government (Hazell and Yong 2012;Bennister and Heffernan 2012). In the first phase of the coalition Cameron benefited from the fact that the Lib Dems, especially when measured by poll ratings and election results, became electorally and politically weakened.…”

“…Viewing the various phases of the coalition, we can see that presently the Conservatives and the Lib Dems more often now agree to disagree, in sharp contrast to the first phase of coalition government of 'civilised partnership' (Hayton 2014;Heywood 2013;Bennister and Heffernan 2012). Here both parties sought to function as a largely harmonious entity (something which prompted the odd out of touch Tory to suggest the parties should fight a subsequent election on a joint ticket (Boles 2010) and both parties maintained a good working relationship (Hazell and Yong 2012).…”

“…Because the veto wielding Nick Clegg-and his party-can restrain the Tories, even if the Tories simultaneously restrain them, Cameron-and his Tory ministers-have had to compromise his and their policy ambitions. The second equally problematic, if more familiar constraint is that Cameron has had to manage a restive, often unhappy Conservative parliamentary party in which a sizable minority of rightward leaning Tory MPs remained unreconciled to his political agenda and have been prepared, if not to topple him as party leader and prime minister, to use their parliamentary voice and vote to challenge the policy of his coalition with which they disagree (for discussion of Cameron's premiership see Bennister and Heffernan 2012;Hayton 2014;Heppell 2013;Theakston 2012). …”

Conservative ministers in the Coalition government of 2010–15: evidence of bias in the ministerial selections of David Cameron?

“…[2] This type of comment characterised much of the published work that does exist on how Cameron selected coalition era ministers (on the wider debate on Prime Ministerial constraints in coalition see Bennister and Heffernan 2012). The emphasis is on debating proportionality (the numbers of Conservatives vis-à-vis Liberal Democrat ministers) or the prestige of the portfolios between the parties; or the renegotiation of those numbers and prestige when reshuffles occur (see, Quinn, Bara and Bartle 2011;Debus 2011;Bäck, Debus and Dumont, 2011).…”