Daily View: The future government
Commentators speculate about what we can expect from David Cameron as prime minister and a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition.
The the new government is good news for people on the centre-left of the political spectrum:
"With Conservatives and Liberal Democrats looking set to sit side by side round the cabinet table, it is possible that party politics will never be quite the same again. Reports that the new government will soon fix parliamentary terms will, we hope, prove to be only the first of many indicators of how the fact of coalition will rewrite the political rules."
The article goes on to highlight the problems which may lie ahead:
"The great test of both parties will be whether the rich can be made to pay their fair share for the debt, or whether instead the burden will fall on the poor and those on lower incomes through service cuts and rises in VAT. Labour, regrouping, will see future opportunity here. Today, though, may still be a liberal moment of a kind. Not the one we, and others, sought. A very fragile one. But not a moment entirely without possibility either."
why the market wanted the Conservatives in No 10:
"The Market isn't just a bunch of traders, fund managers and other investors who are trying to make sense of what is going on. Most of these individuals happen to be Tory voters, but the market, collectively, is not political; it is pragmatic. If the pound is pummelled, it is not out of malice. Investors in the gilts market do not buy government debt when the Tories run the country and sell it when Labour is elected. They may make short-term bets on interest rates, but beyond that there is one over-riding concern: if I lend money to the British government, will I get my money back in the end?"
he is glad Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell won't be in office:
"Yesterday they attempted to launch a pseudo-coup. Thank God it failed. Labour people were too sensible to be dragged along with it and credit is due to John Reid, David Blunkett and others for pointing out that it couldn't work.
"Mandelson and Campbell are both very talented people. But they have presided over a culture of conducting politics in a very underhand manner. I may be naive but I hope things will be very different under the new government."
The editor of the ConservativeHome website, that, although he likes the Conservatives' Big Society policy, he thinks their election campaign lacked professionalism:
"You get the idea sometimes from the media that the Cameron team was too PR tested and poll driven. Actually I think it would have been better if it had been more poll driven - that they tested their policies properly to ensure that they would have more bite on the doorstep."
when he compares Gordon Brown's departure to David Cameron's arrival:
"The amateurs won after all. They beat the professionals. His speech outside the Downing St door made his pitch. The elderly, frail, vulnerable. Bit of freedom and fairness. The Tory-hating section of society will have climaxed in their loathing at these words. Personally, from my occasional encounters with him, dating from 2001, Cameron has always seemed a decent, public-spirited, one-Nation sort of Tory who has been bred in the Treasury.
"Then there was the husbandly touch around his wife's mid-section - it's an ambiguous area when your wife is pregnant - it became a little uncertain, and therefore the object of comment. Oh, it's a new day all right."
