Coalition is UK’s ‘anchor in a global storm’
By Cassie Chambers
The coalition government will remain intact until 2015, a top Liberal Democrat said today.
Calling the coalition a "stable anchorage in the global economic storm", former Cabinet minister David Laws argued in a newspaper article that the partnership between the two parties is strong and productive.
"After the divisions over Lords reform, many commentators have predicted that the coalition will collapse in 2013," Laws wrote in the Telegraph.
"My view is that today's pessimism is absurdly over done. This was never going to be a bump free journey."
Last week's Tory rebellion over Lords reform has led many to speculate that the coalition is becoming increasingly strained and unstable.
Yet Laws praised the accomplishments of the government as "extraordinarily bold", adding that "if [the government] could deliver on it, [it] would be the most effective peacetime government of the past 100 years".
But the coalition must work hard if it wishes to continue to make achieve its goals, Laws warned.
Heading into what he called the "dull sounding mid-term review", Laws made several recommendations to the coalition, including keeping Scotland in the United Kingdom, extending the right to marry to gay couples, and bringing more competition into banking.
However the coalition's most important goal, Laws said, must be to remain unified.
"An early general election is unattractive to the public, the financial markets, and both coalition parties," Laws argued.
He continued: "A break-up would lead to a minority conservative government, incapable of implementing any hard decisions."
Laws went on to suggest that the fate of the two parties is intertwined, and that they must work together to ensure their mutual success.
"The prime minister and his deputy created this coalition, and they will be judged by its success," Laws wrote in the Telegraph.
"Both parties now have the responsibility to ensure that the next two and a half years are not some loveless and unproductive marriage, but a creative partnership which addresses the real concerns and priorities of the main stream majority of British people."
Laws briefly served as chief secretary to the Treasury in the coalition before being forced to resign in 2010 after an expenses scandal.
The Liberal Democrat is still seen as widely influential, however, and his support is thought to be essential to the political future of deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.
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