Cameron's coalition has defied the doomsayers, but faces difficult middle age

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/nov/07/coalition-government-midterm-report

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British governments historically do not have known midway points, but courtesy of fixed-term parliaments,Tuesday marks the day when Britain's first postwar coalition government reaches ripe middle age.

With the next election set for 7 May 2015, and Cameron being made prime minister by the Queen on 11 May 2010, 911 days in office marks the halfway point, (even if others using different start dates might quibble).

Middle age is a moment for regrets, pride in achievement and nervous testing of the muscles for signs of irreversible decay. There is also that nagging worry that decisions made in haste in youth will return to haunt.

No 10 said nothing would be done to mark the moment: the grind of government would continue, and a midterm review, billed as "a coalition 2.0 reboot", has been put back until January, partly reflecting the need to give that review a decent interval from the bad news expected in the autumn statement on 5 December.

The first striking fact about the coalition has been its very survival in such perilous economic times. Repeated and much exaggerated reports of the coalition's imminent death have been made in the last two and a half years, including the latest over an obscure row concerning the date on which a constituency boundary review would come into force.

Some ministers continue to say that if independent observers watched a departmental ministerial meeting, they would be hard pressed to distinguish the Tory from Liberal Democrat. The everyday business of government is as much administrative as a collision of ideas. According to Robert Hazell, director of University College London's constitution unit: "Officials say relations at the top of the pyramid remain harmonious. Gordon Brown was a great hoarder of information and sprung surprises, sometimes big ones. A working coalition means none of that happens."

Unlikely allies have also emerged. Vince Cable, the business secretary, and David Willetts, his higher education minister, for instance enjoy and respect one another's intellect.

Some ministers have not rubbed along as well. Lynne Featherstone and Theresa May at the Home Office, for instance, was an unhappy coupling. Sometimes the dispute has been political rather than personal. A rare intra-ministerial war has broken out in the energy department over windfarms requiring, No 10 to arbitrate. But neither team, around Clegg or Cameron, seriously contemplates an early election.

The second striking fact has been the coalition's energy. Two-party government has not meant the kind of gridlock that dominates partisan Washington. Even if it has been more of a coalition government than a coalition parliament, Tory MPs have blocked few laws. The 2010-12 session, according to the Institute for Government, was one of the busiest of the past 15 years with 42 government bills passed into law. This figure is smaller than the session immediately after the Labour election victory of 1997, the last time that a new government with a reforming agenda took office. The 1997/98 session saw 62 bills passed, but arguably the coalition legislation has been on a grander scale sweeping through every domestic department, often with uneven results.

In its own terms, the education department has probably been the most successful, and unsurprisingly was highlighted by David Cameron in his age of aspiration conference speech. The education secretary, Michael Gove, has assembled a handpicked team to drive reform relentlessly and take on what he calls "the blob" – the education establishment.

On 1 November, 2,456 academies opened in England. With that revolution will come problems of centralisation. But no one can doubt Gove's single mindedness.

Similarly, Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, arrived in office with a mission, the introduction of a universal credit that merges tax and benefit and has overcome the institutional resistance of the Treasury.

George Osborne has exacted a heavy price for his co-operation – billions in cuts, with another £10bn yet to be sanctioned by the Liberal Democrats. Some of the announced cuts, such as the bedroom tax and benefit cap do not come into force until April next year. Their impact could be severe, as would a botched introduction of Universal Credit.

The stand-out political disaster has been the health reforms. Clegg remarked ruefully a year ago he had learned a lesson – do not propose a solution until you have convinced the public there is a problem. His former director of strategy, Richard Reeves, was even more blunt in his vivid assessment for the thinktank Demos, describing the then health secretary Andrew Lansley "as like a doctor operating without warning on a patient unaware they were sick, leaving his scalpel in their belly and then blaming them".

The new health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is gently removing the scalpel and trying to shift the debate to issues such as dementia, vital areas where the political divide is less raw.

But Clegg himself can hardly give himself high marks in his area of direct responsibility. The AV referendum, Lords reform, political funding represent a trilogy of failure, sometimes Clegg's fault, sometimes Cameron's. In related constitutional fields such as open courts, the draft communications bill and even relations with Europe, more pain awaits the coalition. In the second half of the parliament Clegg hopes to revive reform through a dispersion of economic, as much as political power.

Reeves is also sharp on the unresolved issue of green politics. "There is a political challenge within the government to resolve the tension between a chancellor determined that green does not get in the way of growth, a deputy prime minister convinced they can and must, and a prime minister who has yet to properly declare his hand". The much delayed energy bill will force Cameron to show his cards.

But all this is dwarfed by fate of the economy, and the wisdom of "Plan A". The half-term report card on growth is stark, made no easier by Lord Heseltine's damning verdict last week that he could not yet detect a growth strategy. The economy has grown by 0.6% in two and a half years, instead of the 6% growth projected by the Office for Budget Responsibility. Moreover the deficit has only been cut by a quarter; the same amount the outgoing Labour government promised to achieve.

The Treasury chief secretary, Danny Alexander, insists the government would have cut as it did in 2010, even if it knew then what it knows now about the rest of the economy.

But the fight at the 2015 election will be about the metrics of success, including whether it was commodity prices, depressed European markets, or fiscal consolidation that blew the economy off course. For what it's worth the National Institute of Economic and Social Research this week predicted UK growth of 1.1% in 2013 and 1.7% in 2014, meaning the economy would not have returned to pre-recession level until the end of 2014.

The bigger test will be how the two parties co-exist in the second half of the parliament. The January midterm review will try to provide a roadmap, much of it in existing departmental business plans. But both leaders will be under increasing pressure from within their parties. With every passing day the instinct on both sides will be to avoid bold compromise, and instead to reassure their base by asserting distinctiveness rather solidarity

In short, in middle age the business of government by coalition is going to get tougher.