Slick and slapdash, U-turning and dogmatic - the legacy of the coalition

In 2010 the coalition was cobbled together out of necessity under the mantra of ‘we’re all in it together’ – and set about a radical reshaping of Britain. Has it succeeded?

In August 2010, the usually deadpan, slightly-bored-of-Britain magazine the Economist published a rare excited-about-Britain article. David Cameron’s hastily thrown-together coalition had been in power for only 100 days, but the weekly already liked what it saw. “Most government departments will shrink by a quarter,” it reported. “Britain has embarked on a great gamble. Sooner or later, many other rich-world countries will have to take it too ... For the first time since Margaret Thatcher handbagged the world in 1979, Britain looks like the west’s test tube.”

Five years on, the results of that experiment are all around us. From free schools left to invent themselves in barely converted buildings, to the micromanagement of poor homes via the bedroom tax; from the brave challenge to Tory traditionalism of same-sex marriage, to the tabloid-pandering of the welfare cap; from a sudden and vast reorganisation of the NHS to almost a million public sector job cuts; from promises kept on austerity-busting benefit increases for pensioners, to promises broken over tripled tuition fees for students; from the lavish Help to Buy scheme for homeowners to a reduction of a fifth in the disability living allowance; from record levels of employment to the proliferation of zero-hours contracts; from the sell-off of the Royal Mail to the closure of the Forensic Science Service; from the 2012 cut in the top rate of tax for the richest quarter of a million earners, to the half a million Britons, at least, who used food banks in the financial year 2014-15 – in these and a blur of other ways, the coalition has reshaped Britain, patchily but profoundly.

There was a clear sense at first that this government might not last

There was huge apprehension in government about the cuts programme and what it might provoke

There is a dawning realisation that the British may not be as competent constitutionally as people thought

This has been a strange government: both slick and slapdash, U-turning and dogmatic, laidback and relentlessly partisan

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