Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
As the headmaster said to the pupil, whilst thrashing him with a cane, "this is hurting me more than it's hurting you ... " 
This actually has nothing to do with the Tories at all, unless you're happy to swallow the Liberal Democrat excuses for ratting on their principles in order to score political points.
Certainly, in the context of reduced numbers of MPs, and therefore a lower parliamentary wage bill, it could have happened. It would have happened. The one and only thing that stopped it happening was the withholding of Lib Dem votes. |
It was a mistake for the Lib Dems to make such an agreement in the first place if it's something that they would have wanted regardless. Maybe they thought it was a win-win scenario and maybe the Conservatives thought they were bluffing so felt confident in scrapping Lords reform.
However the deal was made and the Tories do share the blame for reneging on their part of the agreement. Once that happened it would have been bad politics to go ahead as the Tories could have pulled support for other parts of the coalition agreement they didn't like in the belief the Liberal Democrats would fold on every issue. Agreements are useless otherwise.
The Tories were told quite clearly the consequences of breaking their side of the agreement and went ahead anyway. They can't then play victim that the Liberal Democrats didn't then support their side of the bargain. It's a naive, almost arrogant, approach to politics the type of which probably explains why they found themselves needing a coalition in the first place.
EDIT: Actually thinking about it this was probably what Cameron wanted anyway. No one really cares about commons/lords reform. He probably would have had trouble with his party over Lords reform so he could just ditch it, blame the Lib Dems for commons reform, and no voters care enough anyway.