LOCAL elections exposed deep rifts in Britain's first coalition since World War II but the Conservatives and their junior Lib Dem partners know that despite the mismatch they are stuck with each other. In a bitter twist for the Lib Dems, voters punished the left-leaning junior coalition partner for endorsing the government's austerity policies while leaving the Conservatives who engineered the spending cuts largely unscathed. The Conservatives, who mark their first year in coalition Wednesday, had always made clear they planned tough medicine to rein in Britain's record peacetime budget deficit. “Many of the people who voted for the Conservatives at the last election knew what they were going to get and basically that's what they've got,” said Steven Fielding, director of Nottingham University's Center for British Politics. Particularly painful was the crushing defeat in a referendum on voting reform, a key plank of the Lib Dem platform that would have leveled the playing field for smaller parties, which feel they lose out in Britain's first-past-the-post voting system. Prime Minister David Cameron's vigorous campaign against reform belied the picture of a comfortable alliance broadcast after he was forced into coalition with Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg by last year's indecisive general election result. But no one should have been surprised, some Lib Dems said. “Some of us never had many illusions about the Conservatives anyway,” Business Secretary Vince Cable, a senior Lib Dem, told the BBC Saturday. “They have emerged as ruthless, calculating and thoroughly tribal.” Financial markets have so far remained calm, largely because it is not seen as in the Lib Dems' interest to walk away from government, or in the Conservatives' interest to let them go. No matter what animosity the local elections exposed, the Conservatives are not in a position to go it alone and both parties have pledged to govern together until 2015. Projected nationally, the opposition Labour Party's share of the vote last week was 37 percent, two points more than the Conservatives. A snap national election would be risky for both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. Despite the Lib Dems' humiliating defeat at the ballot box, there were no immediate signs of a challenge to Nick Clegg, the party's leader and deputy prime minister. Chris Huhne, the cabinet minister seen as his most likely challenger, said now was not the time to change the leadership. There will be changes in the relationship between the two coalition partners, however. The Lib Dems have made it clear they plan to be more assertive, pledging a tougher line on health service reform and tax breaks for the poor and pushing for reform of the unelected upper chamber of parliament, the House of Lords. “There are a lot of things in (the coalition agreement) that we haven't yet realised, a fairer tax system ... the banking system still isn't functioning ... and indeed the health service reforms went some way beyond what had been in the coalition agreement and that is going to be a major issue,” Cable said. Peter Kellner, president of polling group YouGov, said future battles would be in public, rather than in private. “I'm not sure there will be more conflict but there will be more reports of conflict because it will be done publicly,” he said. Many Conservatives warned Cameron against concessions, for example on health, to shore up the Lib Dems and Clegg. “The idea of making concessions to a party thrashed not only in (the referendum) but in local council elections would be absurd,” Conservative member of parliament Peter Bone said. Bone did not see the coalition lasting the full five years and told Reuters he would support Cameron calling an early election if he was not happy with the level of Lib Dem support. “My personal opinion is in a year's time we will put everything in place for the economy to be growing again. Within a year I see little point in the coalition anyway,” he said. Senior Conservative MP, Bernard Jenkin, said the government should concentrate on pushing through its core policies rather than pandering to Lib Dem demands. Political analysts believe an early election is unlikely because Cameron would be accused of bad faith if he called an election without completing his plan to cut the deficit. “The only prospect I see (of an election) in the next year or 18 months is if the Lib Dems pull out of the coalition or act in a way that makes government impossible,” Kellner said, an unlikely prospect given the party's low level of support. Don Foster, a Lib Dem MP, said he believed the next national election would be in 2015, as originally planned. “We (the Lib Dems) did a deal and we would have to have a very good reason for breaking the deal,” he said, adding: “Particularly given the drubbing we have had in these recent elections, the next time we want to go to the polls will be when we have demonstrated that in government we have very seriously been able to deal with some major problems successfully.”
