The coalition promised to restore the authority of parliament, so why wasn't its mid-term progress report delivered there?
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Nick Clegg and David Cameron answer questions during a joint press conference inside No 10 Downing Street. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/AFP/Getty Images
The detail which struck me forcefully about Monday's No 10 press conference went largely unreported, namely that it took place at all in the format it did. David Cameron has virtually abandoned Tony Blair's innovation, the monthly press conference. In any case, if he and Nick Clegg wanted to give a mid-term coalition report, surely they should have done so to MPs who just happened to reconvene on Monday?
We all know what's going on here. Despite political reporters' efforts to put the PM and his deputy on the spot with some good questions, a press conference is a more easily orchestrated event. Journalists aren't elected, the terms of trade are harder, there's no background heckling or cheers, no second question or supplementary, though they do their best.
But the constitutional point is important. The coalition promised to restore the authority of parliament after Blair and Gordon Brown downgraded it with the help of voters who had given them such huge majorities. The Labour leaders had seen what unruly Tory MPs did to John Major's fragile regime after 1992 and staged only one major set-piece debate led by the PM of the moment: the fateful 2003 debate on the decision to go to war again in Iraq.
Worse, when Blair was beaten back over his foolish demand for terrorist suspects to be held for up to 90 days without charge he did so in a statement on TV from Downing Street, even though parliament was in session as he spoke. I watched it at the Paris embassy (an Anglo-French seminar was being held there) and was genuinely shocked by its presidential implications.
All that was then. This is now and Cam-Clegg have done the same. But, as today's Guardian editorial points out, there is less liberal talk of restoring civil liberties in the 52-page accompanying (taxpayer-funded) progress report – which Simon Hoggart mocks here – just as there is less than there was in 2010 about ending the structural deficit by 2015 (it won't happen) or restoring EU powers to Britain.
That's life. Government nowadays is harder than ever; relentless recession combined with relentless 24/7 criticism from media outlets, which are themselves under intense commercial pressure caused by both the recession and the same structural pressures from web-driven competition, which is crippling great swaths of the retail business.
So my reading of the press conference remains what it was when I watched it from the Guardian's Commons office, that it was mostly bland, as you'd expect between two men locked in a political marriage of convenience – still the most suitable description despite the duo's denials – which they are determined to sustain until 2015 because no one in sight has a better idea.
It won't get easier, especially if Ukip further inflames the Tory right. But their bluff can be called by bold leadership – as even John Major showed when pushed too hard.
Cameron usually manages to sound cheerful and in charge. I was disappointed in Clegg's tone yeon Monday, having felt he'd managed to shake off the priggish, victimised whine he routinely adopted in the past ("How can you doubt my good faith when you can see I am doing my best?") . Yesterday he relapsed.
Even the "I don't think it's helpful to set the deserving poor against the undeserving poor" (ie, strivers v shirkers in tabloid speak) remark was not robust enough to make much impact, though posher papers like the Guardian, Times and FT highlighted it as the nearest thing they could find to a proper row. The Mail went negative in its own way. It's what I call "the adversarial paradigm" – the media's love of conflict.
Lord Strathclyde's resignation as the coalition's leader of the Lords was another chance to detect a split in coalition ranks. The timing was awful – typical of No 10's poor grip on that side of the business – because it allowed us all to highlight Strathclyde's irritation with recurring Lib Dem rebellions in the Lords.
But that's been true under governments of all shapes and sizes for as long as I can remember, even under Margaret Thatcher's iron rule but more so – as always – whenever Labour is in power.
Most older people, peers or not, tend to be cautious and conservative; they've seen it all before and are usually wiser. So it's inevitable that they will be sceptical about half-baked and modish radicalism – and often right to be.
Isn't that what the coalition wants the Lords to be anyway? A brake on the excesses of the directly elected Commons? Well, in theory it is committed to a reformed and directly elected (rival) Lords too. But Strathclyde, a cheerful character, was as sceptical as he decently could be about that remote prospect while still drawing his government salary.
My hunch is that he's going because he's been on the frontbench for 25 years (14 as Tory Lords leader) and feels he's done his national service and, though far from poor, can make a few more bob – he's 52 – before he starts getting seriously old. Here's his CV, which, you may notice, includes at least one controversial business link. He's also had marital hiccups, so the domestic angle – money and family – is likely to be his prime motive. It's the political equivalent of one of those post-Christmas divorces we read about.
All the same it's a loss. Strathclyde has a lot of experience and is pretty unflappable. He's also a Scot, so that's another unionist lost to the cabinet – Liam Fox was one too – replaced by a southerner. Jonathan Hill, the man who got the job, is a new peer, never an elected MP. But he served as Major's political secretary so he has seen bloodshed.
He wrote somewhere that when a new PM arrives in No 10 – as Major did in 1990 – the phrase "the prime minister wants" was enough to get officials jumping to attention. By the time he/she prepares to be ejected by the voters the phrase is merely the opening bid in a negotiation.
That's where the coalition partners are starting to find themselves too.