VISITING in 1911, the Earl of Rosebery, a former prime minister, crossed out the name Chevening on some headed notepaper and replaced it with “Paradise”. A century on, Nick Clegg, who these days shares the grace-and-favour retreat with William Hague, the foreign secretary, would probably scribble “Haven”. In the outside world the Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister is the target of jokes from politicians who doubt his power in the government, and of personal abuse in the streets from voters enraged by his collaboration with the Conservatives. His party has lost nearly half of its support in opinion polls since May. In person, he sometimes cuts a beleaguered figure.

The Lib Dems are following their leader's injunction to “own” everything the coalition does instead of openly carping at policies they dislike. They are a contrarian bunch; many expected them to try to be in government and somehow in opposition at the same time. They have been more grown-up than that. Still, for its own credibility, the party must be seen to be making a difference to policy. On the big issue of the day, they are failing. The coalition is cutting the fiscal deficit as aggressively as the Tories could have wished if they were governing alone. The Lib Dems, who campaigned in the general election to delay the public-spending cuts until next year, have struggled to explain their change of heart. Costly pet causes, such as the party's opposition to higher university-tuition fees, have been ditched.

But not all politics is economics. Some of it is life and death. And here, the Lib Dems are influential. Take the government's current dilemma over control orders. These restrictions, which amount to house arrest for a few suspected terrorists, were introduced by the previous Labour government to deal with those who could not be brought to trial because evidence was scant or sensitive. Earlier methods of protecting the public from them, such as prolonged incarceration without charge and deportation to countries where they might be tortured, had been ruled unlawful. Critics of control orders—including almost all Lib Dems—say they are “Kafkaesque” violations of liberty. Their defenders, who include Theresa May, the home secretary, and the security services, doubt that the proposed alternatives, such as allowing evidence obtained by intercepting e-mails and phone conversations to be used in court, would solve the problem.

A purely Tory government would probably have retained control orders. In opposition the party promised to review the policy but, unlike the Lib Dems, did not commit to abolishing them. The Tories harbour some libertarians (Ken Clarke, the justice secretary, and Dominic Grieve, the attorney-general, among them) but they are outnumbered by hardliners. Some previously ambivalent ministers have been won over by advice from the security services. With the Lib Dems to please, however, it is uncertain whether David Cameron, the prime minister, will ultimately decide to keep the orders. If the Home Office review that is currently examining counter-terrorism laws recommends their retention, the junior branch of the coalition will rage.

Recent weeks have provided other glimpses of the Lib Dems' influence on non-economic matters. On November 1st the government was forced to concede that Britain's blanket ban on prisoners voting was unsustainable under the European Convention on Human Rights. On October 29th Mr Cameron accepted a 2.9% increase in the European Union's budget. True, both of these very un-Tory things might have been inevitable. But many Conservative MPs are convinced, probably rightly, that Mr Cameron would have fought harder against them were he not having to keep Mr Clegg's libertarian, Europhile party on side.

This is the exact opposite of what many expected at the founding of the coalition. Back then, the distribution of cabinet posts seemed to speak for itself: many important economic jobs were handed to Lib Dems (including the roles of chief secretary to the treasury and business secretary) while Tories monopolised home and foreign affairs, justice and defence.

The soft underbelly

But perhaps the Lib Dems' clout on issues such as counter-terrorism should not be so surprising. On economics, the party is split between liberals and social democrats. But on home and foreign affairs, it is perhaps the most united of the three main parties. And Tory thinking in these areas was a vacuum waiting to be filled. Following the resignation of David Davis in 2008, Mr Cameron failed to settle on a home-affairs spokesman. Ms May was his unexpected choice after the election.

If the Lib Dems' sway on these issues was foreseeable, so are its political dangers. One is Tory anger. Even some of the Conservative MPs who agree with the Lib Dems on control orders worry about their liberal line on crime. Behind the scenes, figures from both parties are coming together to plan “coalition 2.0”—a policy programme for the second half of the parliament. Among the rumoured Tory representatives are confirmed hawks such as Michael Gove, the education secretary, Owen Paterson, the Northern Ireland secretary, and Tim Montgomerie, a well-known blogger. They are likely to press for a grittier home-affairs policy.

A bigger worry for the coalition should be broader public opinion. Some of Mr Cameron's advisers say that the coalition allows them to jettison policies favoured by their party's right-wing fringe. But on terror and crime, most voters are in tune with the Tory right; and that is before the dreaded prospect of another terrorist attack in Britain. The Labour opposition, if it resolves its own divisions on home affairs, could wound the government by portraying it as ideologically hostile to the state in all its functions, whether in protecting people's livelihoods or indeed their very lives.





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