Back in the balmy, sunny days of July, I remember sitting on the House of Commons terrace with a streetwise and politically savvy Conservative minister and discussing this year’s party conferences over a chilled white wine or two.
He predicted – and at the time I thought he was probably right – that the most dangerous dissent against the coalition Government would come from pesky Liberal Democrat activists at their conference in Liverpool.
But by and large, apart from a few polite moans during a question-and-answer session with Nick Clegg – “I can trust you with my life, but can I trust you with my party?” – the pesky Lib Dems weren’t as mutinous as my ministerial companion and I had predicted.
I’d say the majority of Lib Dems in Liverpool suddenly woke up and realised that actually it’s much better being in government than being in opposition, which is where the Liberals were for decades before they joined this coalition.
Conservatives, on the other hand, are used to being in government, but not used to being in a coalition. So suddenly, it’s pesky Tory activists who are threatening to turn ugly in Birmingham and pose the biggest challenge to the coalition during the autumn conference season.
I’m told that just like last year, when then party chairman Eric Pickles slapped a pre-election “no complacency” ban on Champagne, there’ll be no fizz this year. This time, it’s a
“no triumphalism” ban, I’m told, along with the “age of austerity” and “we’re all in this together” message.
Triumphalism? Well, I’m not sure there’s much appetite for that, anyway. There are plenty of Tories – activists and MPs – who take the Lord Ashcroft view that David Cameron and his Notting Hill set blew it in May with their trendy “Big Society” nonsense that voters couldn’t understand and that the Conservatives should have won by a landslide.
That was also the view at the Labour conference. On the Sunday afternoon, while many people in Manchester were still reeling from the shock of Ed Miliband’s defeat of his brother David in the leadership election on the Saturday, the party debated the general election campaign.
The tone of the debate, set by election co-ordinator Douglas Alexander when he opened the discussions, was that Labour’s defeat could have been a lot worse and the party had actually done quite well considering a 13-year spell in government, the financial crisis and Lord Ashcroft’s millions.
So Cameron and the Tory leadership won’t want to gloat. And they’ll have to explain to many disgruntled activists how they managed to blow a massive opinion poll lead, why they allowed Clegg to take part in the three television debates and why they’re now in coalition with a party hated by many Tory councillors and activists, instead of in power on their own with a decent Commons majority.
The way the election campaign was run won’t be the only gripe. There will be plenty of Conservative councillors who are uneasy about some of the cuts that will hit schools and other public services in their area and the political damage the cuts could inflict on them locally.
There are quite a few Conservative MPs at Westminster who believe Michael Gove has made a complete pig’s ear of the school rebuilding fiasco. They don’t like telling their constituents they can’t have a new school any more than Labour or Lib Dem MPs do.
But the biggest moans from Conservative activists are likely to be about voting reform and Cameron’s decision to allow Clegg to go ahead with his pet project of a referendum on the alternative vote next May.
You only have to look at the amendments tabled so far for the committee stage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which takes up four days of Commons business in the first two weeks after the Tory conference, to see how much trouble some Conservative backbenchers are determined to make for Clegg and, as a result, Cameron.
Bernard Jenkin, Douglas Carswell, Eleanor Laing, Charles Walker, Graham Brady, Edward Leigh and other fully paid up members of the Tory awkward squad have all laid booby traps for Clegg which could easily blow up in his – and Cameron’s – face.
Clearly anticipating trouble in Birmingham, Cameron responded to Lord Ashcroft’s resignation as deputy chairman by promoting some outspoken hard men from the Tory right to key jobs.
The appointment of Michael Fallon, an articulate voice on the Treasury Select Committee, as Ashcroft’s replacement and “minister for the Today programme” is shrewd and will please those Tories who share David Davis’ “Brokeback Coalition” view of the Cameron-Clegg partnership. Likewise Mark Pritchard, appointed to the party’s international office.
Earlier in the summer, there was some heady talk of Lib Dem ministers attending the Tory conference and vice versa. But the threat of mutiny in the air has meant that idea has been massively scaled down.
There may be a few fraternal visits from Lib Dem ministers at fringe meetings in Birmingham. But Lib Dems speaking from the platform in the conference hall? Forget it.
As one Tory minister put it to me rather eloquently: “When you take your girlfriend to stay at your parents’ home for the first time, you don’t sleep with her, you put her in the spare room.”
Some Government ministers have likened the coalition to a civil partnership. But the sort of Tories who are not keen on civil partnerships are not keen on the coalition either. So a couple of months on from that balmy evening on the Commons terrace, in the chilly autumn air in Birmingham it will be pesky Tory activists, not Lib Dems, that Conservative ministers will be worrying about.
Jon Craig is Sky News’ chief political correspondent
