Five Days that Changed Britain
I don’t appear in tonight’s BBC documentary, Five Days that Changed Britain, which examines the twists and turns leading to the formation of the Coalition. When approached by the programme makers, I was initially enthusiastic.
Great, I thought. A chance to explain why I called for a deal with the Lib Dems on Radio 4 the day after the election, when the idea still seemed rather outré. An opportunity to examine how common ground between direct democracy Conservatives and Orange Book Liberals makes the Coalition possible.
Errrr. No.
The BBC researcher, obviously looking for someone to cast as Mr Angry Right Winger, instead wanted me to talk of the Coalition as a betrayal. Suspecting that the programme makers might have “the Tory Right” down as bogeymen that the Coalition's architects needed to overcome, I declined politely.
Indeed, it took several goes for the BBC researcher to get the idea that I might actually favour many of the policies on which the Coalition is built – such as elected police chiefs, radical localism, a Great Repeal Bill – having been the original author of such policies.
I fear the notion of the Coalition as Whig radicalism re-born, or as Edmund Burke dot com, which really would change Britain, might not have made it into this evening’s script. I shall watch with interest.