Goodbye to All That

thetimes.co.uk - Britain’s first coalition government in 65 years has come to an end not, as widely expected, with a bang but in an orderly and almost courteous manner. In the coming election campaign it will no doubt be derided as an awkward hybrid, the political equivalent of the mythical centaur. That would be unfair. The coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats not only confounded many critics but can also lay claim to having been a genuinely transformative government.

The Liberal Democrats have sometimes placed irksome restraints on their Conservative partner but the coalition generated reforming zeal in a way