CoalitionWatch - What does David Laws resignation mean for the coalition?

So David Laws becomes the first Ministerial casualty of the Con-Lib coalition government. What does this mean for the coalition?

Well... in the short term, nothing really. Longer term though, there may be implications about Cabinet management which the coalition leaders and their teams need to consider.

Short-term

Regarding the short-term, David Laws' role as Chief Secretary to the Treasury means that to all intents and purposes he played second fiddle to the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne; and so his resigning from that position causes no particular crisis either in the Treasury specifically or the government more generally.

We should remind ourselves that the position of Chief Secretary is regarded as a relatively minor one in the Cabinet, and that very few people remember the work of good or bad ones. For example, do you remember the public spending achievements of former Chief Secretaries William Waldegrave and Des Browne in, respectively, the mid 1990s and mid 2000s? Yet if I asked whether you recall their Treasury bosses, Chancellors Ken Clarke and Gordon Brown, I'm pretty certain that not only would you have some idea what they achieved in their time in office but that at the time you held them - and not their Chief Secretary underlings - responsible for UK economic success.

Don't believe all the commentary you may have read that somehow the Chief Secretary is this all-important mythical figure which the Great British public will throw tomatoes at when impending spending cuts start to bite. The Chief Secretary is a significant role for sure, but it is simply one amongst a wider Treasury team - if things go well, it will be George Osborne and coalition leaders David Cameron and Nick Clegg that will get the credit; and if things go badly, it will be the same three that will get the blame.

So Laws' newly appointed replacement, Danny Alexander, can sleep soundly in the knowledge he won't be held solely responsible for the public spending cuts and the success or otherwise of UK plc!

Longer-term...

What may be perhaps of more significance about David Laws' resignation in the longer-term is what it says about potential Cabinet management, and the "What if?" question. What if Laws had not stood down voluntarily and David Cameron had wanted to sack him instead; and what if Deputy PM Nick Clegg had objected?

Notwithstanding Laws' personal tragedy in all this, it may be the episode acts as a beneficial and timely reminder to the Cameron and Clegg teams that there needs to be a strong conflict resolution procedure in place at the very top of government, to deal with such exigencies in future. Although a 'Coalition Committee' was instituted as part of the Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition agreement to iron out differences between the parties - see 'Coalition Agreement for Stability and Reform' - and although that agreement provides for the the PM to "consult with and have regard to the views of the Deputy Prime Minister" on public appointments, there would surely be a crisis in Cabinet management should the PM and DPM fail to agree on matters concerning the composition of the Cabinet, and who should remain within it. Only "consulting" and "regarding" the views of the Deputy PM surely reinforces a logic which says ultimately the PM has responsibility for such decisions - doesn't it?

The real lesson in the Laws saga is that, at a time when strong government is essential to drive through the tough economic measures to get the UK back on its feet again, there is a potential weak spot in the coalition set-up: that potential failure to address the "What if?" question, should the PM and his Deputy fail to see eye-to-eye. This could have serious implications for the unity of the coalition government, should the next calls for Ministerial resignation fail to be greeted with the unanimity David Cameron and Nick Clegg managed to demonstrate during the David Laws affair. Unlike the position of Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the public would certainly hold the PM and the DPM to account personally, for a failure to manage a Cabinet tasked with delivering the universally-accepted priority of turning aound the fortunes of UK plc.