Politics

Like Disraeli, Cameron plays well with a poor hand

May 18, 2010
The hand he always wanted?
The hand he always wanted?

David Cameron has recently been much compared to Benjamin Disraeli, the Tory prime minister who warned that extension of the vote would be tantamount to letting the mob into power. Disraeli eventually adopted the cause as his own, shattering his party in the process. In his own negotiations, Cameron has apparently shown a similar ability to change his mind. But is it laudable pragmatism or—as some (former) Lib Dem supporters would have it—brutal realpolitik?

Disraeli, before the twists that would bring him to the premiership, delivered his first-ever Budget (in 1852) with proper bombast. Outrageously, he proposed to establish income tax–thus far a temporary revenue-raising measure–in perpetuity. An even bigger problem was his economic policy, which  imposed protectionist price controls. Disraeli probably knew that he could not get his budget passed, because a significant number of his own MPs had dedicated themselves to the pursuit of free trade, William Gladstone among them. These “Peelites” would certainly vote in line with the Whigs.

“I know what I have to face,” Disraeli told the commons that day. “I face a coalition. This combination may be successful, but coalitions have always been brief.” Thumping the despatch box, he added: “This, too, I know: that England does not love coalitions.” The budget failed.

It had been only a few months, though, since Disraeli was bargaining for coalition within his own party: Lord Palmerston, Gladstone and the free-trading Peelites, from whom he was certainly more ideologically distant than David Cameron is from Nick Clegg. If it had meant the creation of a majority Conservative government in the House of Commons, Disraeli would have accepted a role junior to Gladstone. He even would have preferred to see Gladstone deliver the above budget, with free trade firmly embraced. In the event, the deal was ruined by the Prime Minister, the Lords-bound Edward Stanley, who would not budge on free trade.

Disraeli was later to split his party over an appropriated agenda of political reform. Yet at this early stage in his career, he was clearly capable of self-sacrifice in the name of political unity. He seemed to see that coalitions indicate a recognition that differing, conflicting ideas can be equally valid. In both cases he was able to play the hand he was dealt as if it were the one he had been hoping for all along: one trait that Cameron really can claim to share. Perhaps Cameron has even surpassed Disraeli's openness by inviting into No 10 a Liberal who has already beaten him in a debate.

The coming age of coalitions will only be survived by those who, like Disraeli, accept that “finality is not the language of politics”.