15th September 2011

In our house we divide the labour reasonably evenly.

My wife basically buys the clothes, plans the menus and decides where we will take our holidays.

I have responsibility for our views on foreign policy. I maintain a critique of Government fiscal policy and usually choose the Manchester United team for the next match.

It works quite well.

We dress well, eat well and always enjoy our holidays. Meanwhile our foreign policy means that we enjoy continued security in our home, our taxes are burdensome but not crippling and Manchester United usually wins.

Reviewing the press recently to see how my views on Libya were shaping up, I saw that the coalition is planning to introduce more women friendly policies.

Ha, I thought, clearly the Cameron and Clegg households enjoy a similar division of labour.

After all Mr Cameron promised that this was going to be ‘a most family friendly administration’ perhaps he has been reminded of his promise and that he is failing a little in delivering on the ‘f’ words, family, friendly and fair because this con-dem Government is sadly demonstrably not family friendly.

It is banker friendly, our rich friends in the south friendly but not family friendly.

So, I thought, that is excellent and I read on.

Then I read that support for the coalition amongst women voters has fallen dramatically, child benefit is clearly at the top of the issues that concern women, but other policies regarding who receives the benefits, the increase in women’s retirement, pensions etc etc.

So women have got the message.

Not family friendly at all.

So why this change of heart?

Then the penny dropped.

If we carry on like this and alienate our most significant constituency we will lose the next election. Right!

Now this raises an interesting point for debate.

Should Governments do what is right for the people they are elected to serve, whatever the consequences, or should all their policies and programmes serve their principal objective, to be re-elected?

In America President Carter took the first view and became a one term President, President Obama is caught between the Devil and the Tea Party.

It is amazing really that over the hundreds of years of parliamentary elections, how often those in power have managed to remain in power, often, even when their policies are deeply unpopular.

That is because ‘staying in power’ is the name of the game.

That is why all the coalition’s policies are geared toward this one simple objective.

Mr Osborne is a very political Chancellor of the Exchequer and his game plan is simple, get the worst over soonest and then offer sweeteners in the two years before the election and people will forget the pain and we will be re-elected.

So in our house I might be given a new responsibility; remembering the years 2010, 2011, 2012 and, like Father Time, reminding people of what happened in those dark days.

After all as a wise Labour Prime Minister once commented, a week is a long time in politics.