The Guardian view on David Cameron’s bedroom tax defeat

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/05/guardian-view-david-cameron-bedroom-tax-defeat

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For the prime minister’s party to be defeated on the floor of the House of Commons is a pretty rare event – happening somewhat less than once a year on average over the last third of a century. For the PM’s party to go down by a hefty Commons majority of 75, as the Conservatives did on the bedroom tax today, is almost unprecedented. True, David Cameron was once hammered on a purely procedural vote after being caught by a Labour ambush, but today’s loss was over real substance: a bill to exempt poor social tenants from paying for spare bedrooms until they’ve actually got the option of somewhere smaller to live.

This is contentious social policy, with direct implications for government spending. It thus touches the government’s authority, making this a very bad first week of term for the new chief whip, Michael Gove. He may plead that the vote “only” concerned a private member’s bill, where MPs are not routinely strongarmed, but after it became clear that Labour and the Liberal Democrats were joining forces, the Tories applied the full three-line whip, and yet could muster only 231 of their 300-plus troops. Bills from the backbenches always struggle, but this one should now get to the Lords, and with a fair wind could even reach the statute book.

Lack of organisation was obviously important, but it could be that Conservative MPs made themselves so hard to organise on this occasion because all force of argument was on the other side. It is not merely disgruntled tenants who dismiss the “removal of the spare room subsidy” as an unavoidable tax. Analysis commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions itself shows that hardly any tenants are downsizing in line with the plan, whereas very many are sinking into poverty or arrears. This outcome was predictable, and indeed predicted by experts, and the House of Lords, which wrote a similar exemption into the original legislation, only for Lib Dem and Conservative MPs to reverse this in the Commons.

Nick Clegg should have listened then, but now – with an election closer – his ears are more attuned. One excitable Tory today declared that the coalition had “officially come to an end”. That’s overdoing it: the two governing parties have gone into separate lobbies before, as on knife-crime sentencing. But today’s Lib Dem revolt cracks the rock of government in two unfamiliar respects. The junior wing is now flapping against a policy it previously endorsed. And, while retrenchment has been the coalition’s defining mission, the Lib Dems are now kicking back against a public-spending cut. This coalition started out life as a strikingly stable political marriage, but the partners are now sleeping in separate bedrooms.