Intrigued by this exchange between the new Home Secretary, Theresa May, and Today's John Humphrys.
Raises a number of questions about the 'new' politics of coalition government - one of which is, of course, whether there's anything new about it at all.
Listen closely to the passage on the Human Rights Act and the Conservatives' manifesto commitment to replace the Act with a Bill of Rights. That commitment, of course, places the Tories in conflict with their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, who, bluntly, do not want to scrap the HRA.
This is obviously a difficult one for the coalition and it was probably unrealistic to expect the Home Secretary to engage on it - and, indeed, she did not.
But the question for interviewers is this: we know manifesto commitments on both sides of the coalition have had to be ditched and/or trimmed - that's coalitions for you; what happens when no party's manifesto gives them a parliamentary majority. So does a line of questioning that says, in effect, 'you can't deliver on this promise from your manifesto' tell us anything we don't already know? Does it take us any closer to finding out what the coalition will do?
And is the assumption that the bigger of the coalition parties is 'in charge', can stamp its foot and have its way an accurate reflection of how this coalition will work? Or, indeed, any coalition can work? Or, indeed, how parties with a majority in parliament have invariably been able to work under the 'old' politics?
What would happen if, instead, we assumed that compromise, negotiation and 'thinking out loud' were the hallmarks of the 'new politics'? That, as Helena Kennedy writes, it may be all about:
"... carving out victories on some areas ... by making concessions elsewhere".
Which, probably should turn our attention towards what's actually happening; which victories are actually being won; which concessions actually made. There'll be stories enough there, you can be assured - and, while the May 2010 manifestos may well be a starting point, they're not likely to be anyone's end point, not on the areas of disagreement, anyway.
Thoughts?
