The menu for the forthcoming dinner dance at Altrincham Conservative Club is illuminating. It begins with the semblance of choice. Please specify pat\u00e9 or melon, it announces. But there is no option when it comes to the main course. And the pudding is a classic marriage of contrasting tastes: rhubarb with ginger crumble.<\/p>\n
Coalitions are a little like that. There is a choice at the outset. But you have all to want the same thing when it comes to the substance. And you just have to hope that, at the end, the confection of contrasting temperaments and ideologies creates a pleasing balance rather than an unhappy feeling that everything has ended up too fiery, too sugary or leaving a sour taste in the mouth.<\/p>\n
Altrincham and Sale West is the constituency of Graham Brady, the Tory MP who is the favourite to become the chairman of the 1922 committee. Normally that job would make him the official shop steward of the Conservative backbenchers. But in a time of coalition it will also make him the watchdog to whom the blue-rinsed shires will look to ensure that an expedient London leadership does not make too many compromises on key Conservative principles.<\/p>\n
This was the perfect place to discover whether the Tory faithful are basically at ease, or unnerved, by the business of compromise with the Liberal Democrats, the party they insistent on caricaturing, with anachronistic joviality, as bearded and sandal-wearing.<\/p>\n
I had been invited by the club secretary to go along at lunchtime and meet some typical Conservative voters. But when I arrived the club\u2019s chairman, Peter Kenyon, came over all cagey. \u201cI don\u2019t want to give you my views and it\u2019s not appropriate for you to talk to members,\u201d he said. I was shown the door and my photographer was bundled out with a discourtesy which was surprising from a party where most of the Cabinet display the smooth good-manners which is what parents pay for in an expensive public school.<\/p>\n
Still, stop anyone on the street between the club and the market, which received its charter in 1240, and it is odds on they will be a Conservative voter. Graham Brady got more votes than almost all the other candidates put together, which is unsurprisingly since the market town of Altrincham eight miles south of Manchester city centre is a place of leafy suburbs where it is not uncommon to see price-tags of \u00a31m plus in estate agents\u2019 windows.<\/p>\n
These are the most expensive residential streets outside of south-east England, as the presence of the occasional premiership footballer\u2019s home reveals. House prices have held up here better than most places during the recession. The seat has return a Tory MP since it was created in 1945.<\/p>\n
Quite what the officials at the Conservative Club were afraid of was unclear. The first chap I stopped in the street was typical of the responses which followed. \u201cGordon Brown has gone and that\u2019s the main thing,\u201d said Derek Ashcroft, 73, a lifelong Tory voter.\u201das to the coalition, I\u2019ll give it the benefit of the doubt just now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m wary and excited at the same time,\u201d said Dr Bill Stephens, a medic on his day off. \u201cI\u2019m pleased that the cuts are going to start straight away. The loss of the lowering of inheritance tax is a concern and I\u2019m not a millionaire by any means. But the Liberals plan to join the Euro was a boneless idea, so I\u2019m pleased that\u2019s been dropped. On the whole I\u2019m cautiously optimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
There were other concerns. \u201cMy husband is in the import\/export business,\u201d said Susan Bromley, a teacher, \u201cand he fears a coalition won\u2019t be good for confidence among the people he does business with abroad. But I don\u2019t mind so much now the Liberals\u2019 immigration amnesty has been shelved. I\u2019d have preferred a Conservative majority but this is still better than a Lib-Labour government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Others have no such reservations. \u201cI don\u2019t think the Conservative policies will get watered down,\u201d said Ray Sharples, the fishmonger opposite the market. \u201cI\u2019m rather glad there\u2019s a coalition. The more ideas they have floating round the table the better. And I like the idea of making students pay more for their education\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pleased,\u201d said Jan Franks. \u201cI was going to vote Lib Dem but then decided it was a wasted vote and I wanted a strong government so I voted Conservative. The main thing is to get the economy right. And they\u2019ve started well with their 5pc pay cut.\u201d<\/p>\n
Admittedly the Tories of Altrincham have some pretty rum ideas when it comes to how a coalition would work. \u201cOn energy we need to combine green and nuclear power,\u201d said Chris Candish, a councillor in Hale at the poshest end of this posh constituency. \u201cWe have to be firm on that and Chris Huhne [the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary] will have to listen. A coalition must be a conversation, not just saying: \u2018I\u2019ll handle this and you do that\u2019. He\u2019ll have to submit his proposals to the whole Cabinet for approval.\u201d<\/p>\n
So presumably Tory ministers would do the same? \u201cIt\u2019s important to take the Liberals with us,\u201d Councillor Candish replied, a tad ambiguously.<\/p>\n
Perhaps Conservatives here are so relaxed because of the character of the local MP. Graham Brady served as a shadow minister under four Conservative leaders before resigning in 2007 in protest at David Cameron\u2019s opposition to grammar schools. Much of the constituency is in the borough of Trafford which has retained the grammar schools and tops the nation\u2019s school league tables as a result. The system has the overwhelming support of local parents, as well as Mr Brady who is himself the product of Altrincham Grammar School, probably the best boys state school in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe resigned from the front bench over this,\u201d said another local councillor Sean Anstee, \u201cwhich shows he\u2019s there to represent the interests of his constituents and not there to further his own career. He has principles that he sticks to, which is why his vote went up this election, even though the Lib Dem one did too.\u00a0 We know that we can rely on Graham to keep a very close eye on the government, which is why he will make a very good chairman of the 1922 committee. He will make sure that Conservative principles aren\u2019t left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
If there is to be a grassroots Conservative revolt over the compromises of coalition it isn\u2019t visible in Altrincham.<\/p>\n
At least not yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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