Sketch: Another coalition love-in
Last time I saw this pair they were in the first throes of their working life, appointed as the chief behind-the-scenes coordinators of coalition harmony. After just a few weeks in power Oliver Letwin and Danny Alexander were clearly delighted with the novelty of their new partnership. Now here they were, appearing before the Commons’ public accounts committee together, in the cold light of early February. Was the honeymoon over?
In some ways, yes. They have grown more serious, trying to Get Things Done as part of the grand job of government. Letwin has even set up a whiteboard, “as Danny knows”, in his office listing all the Things he wants to do. “He does,” Danny said loyally. Letwin knows his limitations, however. “I’m not trying to be ludicrous and play games with dates.” It doesn’t matter if the Treasury misses deadlines, for example.
This last point appeared to trouble committee chair Margaret Hodge, who pointed out that the Treasury had completed just five out of 15 departmental targets set for January. She wondered whose “heads would roll” as a result. Letwin and Alexander seemed to think this wasn’t quite worth a ministerial resignation. But their attitudes were very different. “It is perfectly true our department is behind on a number of things,” he said, looking for all the world as if he was about to break into a Gallic shrug. He looked like a saintly patrician, or a Roman emperor who had just been informed his troops had been a bit overzealous with their slaughtering. Boys will be boys, eh? So will Treasury officials.
Alexander was very different. He is new at the power game and looks the part. “It’s not as if every deadline that’s missed is an incredible failure,” Alexander mumbled, looking defiant. Even the brightest pupils sometimes forget to do their homework.
If this were a detective thriller, he would be the overkeen apprentice who gets shot in the penultimate chapter and leaves the experienced veteran (can’t you just imagine Letwin in a Stetson?) feeling slightly chagrined. In politics, it’s all a bit more boring. The chief secretary to the Treasury showed his inexperience by refusing to let party political points go. At one stage he even mentioned the deficit, in full BBC News 24 mode. “You don’t have to do that here,” Hodge intervened.
A word about Ma Hodge. She has allowed the public accounts committee, a select committee so esteemed it is almost always afforded the cliché ‘influential’, to become more of a salon than a place for grilling ministers. With her stentorian voice and beady eyes it’s difficult not to think of her as the Thinking Man’s Anne Robinson: arms waving as freely as her tongue, which uttered unguarded insults throughout the session. “Oh, it’s nonsense!” she was heard to say when she should have been being quiet at one stage. “Absolute nonsense.”
Hodge’s interventions are more frequent than those of most select committee chairs. Most are fairly quiet after the first round of questions, but this chair easily got in at least 50% of those asked. She rode roughshod over the poor backbenchers who make up her flock.
How about that honeymoon? Judging from Letwin’s remarks, it seems far from over. “Marriages don’t always survive,” he simpered, “but this one seems to be made in heaven.”
