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Ten days ago, Britain's Conservative-Liberal coalition government was sailing calmly toward its landmark 100 days in office when it hit a small iceberg. Its Minister of State for Universities and Science, David Willetts, was on television defending (among other potential cuts in spending) a proposal to withdraw free milk for children under 5 when Prime Minister David Cameron changed the policy.
While on the air, the hapless minister was told by the interviewer that Downing Street had announced free milk would no longer be on the list of potential cuts. Mr. Willetts batted away this embarrassment pretty well - not for nothing is he known as Two Brains - but he was the victim of an obvious political calculation. A similar recommendation 40 years ago had given its proposer, Margaret Thatcher, her first hostile sobriquet: Milk Snatcher. Mr. Cameron had decided to avoid charges of Dave the Dairy Thief.
The problem is that free milk is not a small iceberg but the tip of a very large one. Bold spending cuts are the glue that holds the coalition together. Both Mr. Cameron and his Deputy Prime Minister, Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg, argue that only a coalition government can push through the cuts needed to restore Britain's budgetary and financial stability. They offer Tories and Lib Dems both balm and justification for accepting policy concessions to the other party. And they soothe the markets.
Journalists debate how deep the proposed cuts will really go economically. Some maintain they amount only to a spending freeze. But there's no doubt they go very deep politically. According to the June budget statement, ministries not protected by special "ring fencing" (such as the health and overseas aid departments) will see their projected spending cut by 25 per cent over five years. On Oct. 22, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, is due to present the final list of cuts in practical detail. It will contain scores, if not hundreds, of "free milk" embarrassments.
Or will it? The televised abandonment of David Willetts has now raised uncertainty over whether the cuts will actually materialize when the going gets tough. Michael Brown, a former Tory MP who's now a columnist, knows the ways of government. "Across Whitehall," he wrote in The Independent, "under-secretaries and ministers of state may now be less brave as they try to second-guess Downing Street's likely reaction to any bold proposal they might instruct officials to prepare. 'Minister, I'm not sure this will go down too well if No. 10 gets to hear about this' will be the menacing default position of civil servants."
Once doubts arise about the coalition's determination to proceed with its full program, MPs on all sides will begin to lobby for the preservation of their favourite items of spending. Tories and Lib Dems tend to differ over what's vital and what's dispensable. Bold spending cuts, instead of holding the coalition together, may begin to be a source of division between (and within) the parties.
Indeed, this is already happening. Mr. Clegg has questioned the need to build the next stage of Britain's Trident nuclear weapon, which Tories such as Defence Secretary Liam Fox consider essential in a world where Iran, Pakistan and North Korea are going nuclear. A vigorous war of leaks to the media is raging in Whitehall over Trident. Still, most battles over spending cuts - along with likely public unpopularity over them - lie in the future.
Unease over the balance of advantage between the coalition partners is a more urgent and increasingly public matter. Lib Dems have had to make their share of concessions. Energy Secretary Chris Huhne recently explained - to the surprise of all - how he'd always seen a place for nuclear power in national energy production. Tory education policy (in effect, allowing state schools to become independent) has been accepted by Lib Dem MPs with grumbles. Ditto a numbers "cap" on non-European Union immigrants over the objections of Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable. Lib Dem complaints over such concessions are getting louder.
Yet, it's hard to deny that the most significant concessions have been yielded by the Tories. These include the coalition's decision to transfer regulatory powers over the financial services industry from Britain to the EU (threatening London's pre-eminence as a world financial centre); the hike in capital gains tax on higher-income taxpayers by 10 per cent to 28 per cent (alienating the Tory "savers" vote); the decision to axe the prison building program in favour of "non-custodial" sentencing in the community; and, above all, legislation offering a referendum on changing the electoral system from "first past the post" to the "alternative vote."
If the referendum were to pass, it would greatly benefit the Lib Dems, making them the permanent governing "centre party" in a multiparty spectrum. But it probably would also mean the Tories would never again win a governing majority - and probably lose seats in the next election, too. The same legislation also proposes a fixed five-year parliamentary term - with elections any earlier requiring a 55-per-cent majority of MPs - to make Mr. Cameron and Mr. Clegg secure from rebellion this time around.
So how has the coalition's junior partner been able to extract such a lopsided governing program? The answer seems to be that the Lib Dems are in greater need of concessions. They're falling precipitously in the polls - one showed them at 12-per-cent support, down from 23 per cent at the election - and they need to show their supporters they're effective. So the Tories must keep yielding to them in case they leave the coalition. As Tim Montgomerie of www.conservativehome.com has said: "The coalition is either heading leftward or heading for breakdown."
It's hardly surprising if more conservative Tories are getting restive. Under this scenario, they face the prospect of five years spent trudging through a slough of unpopularity in support of a government program they largely dislike only to enter an election fought on a new electoral system that's likely to deny them a majority even if they're then popular. "Very brave of you, if I may say so, Prime Minister," Sir Humphrey Appleby used to say about his boss's madcap schemes.
The latest polls underscore such skepticism. The coalition had a strong lead over the opposition when it was formed; today, that lead is one point. Tories now enjoy a lead of four to five points over Labour compared with eight at the election. Why? Because Labour has picked up two-thirds of former Lib Dem voters. And these negative trends have set in almost nine weeks before the bad news over spending cuts breaks.
HMS Coalition will get a good press on its 100th day anniversary. But many other icebergs lie ahead.
John O'Sullivan, a former special adviser to Margaret Thatcher, is editor-at-large of National Review.