Is it time Cameron showed Clegg who’s boss?

"DOES THE prime minister think it is about time he told the deputy
prime minister who is the boss?" asked Nadine Dorries at Prime
Minister's Questions on Wednesday. The Conservative MP was angry that David Cameron had been persuaded by his Lib Dem coalition partner Nick Clegg to withdraw his support for a change to the law on abortion.

Commentators have since been debating whether the Lib Dems, who have 57 MPs to the Tories' 306, have too much influence on the coalition.

"From the original Coalition negotiations until now, there has been a suspicion that the Liberal Democrats have had it extraordinarily
easy," the Mail on Sunday says in a leading article. "The tail has
wagged the dog so hard that the head is dizzy… many Conservative proposals are diluted, undermined, reversed or simply elbowed to the back of the queue.

"It is time for Mr Cameron to worry much more about a part of the
Coalition he seldom meets but who are far more vital to him than Mr Clegg – the Tory voters who put him where he is."

Jimmy Young, writing in the Sunday Express, says Cameron "must show, clearly and publicly, who is the boss in this Coalition
Government.

"If necessary he should threaten to call an election. He should remind Mr Clegg and his increasingly arrogant supporters that Liberal Democrats limped in a distant third in the general election."

Maybe, but the Conservatives didn't win the election either, says
Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer. In putting her question to
Cameron, "Ms Dorries inadvertently paid a very welcome compliment to the Lib Dem leader", who would like to be seen as the "puppet-master" rather than the "puppet".

He points out that while some Tories accuse Clegg of holding back
their party, other Conservatives believe Cameron is using Clegg as an excuse not to pursue right-wing policies he secretly opposes.

"Whichever leader they blame for their disappointments, the eyes of these angry Tories are too fogged with blue mist to see the world clearly…

"Conservative MPs are demanding that David Cameron govern as if the Tories had a landslide when their party did not win any sort of
majority at all. They seem to have forgotten that failure. Or perhaps
their real problem is that they cannot forgive it." ·