THE UR CAN STILL BE TRANSFOMATIVE IF HE GOES TO SCHOOL ON NICK CLEGG:

This Coalition is proving to be a truly revolutionary regime (Peter Oborne, November 4th, 2010, Daily Telegraph)

It is, of course, far too early to speak of the Cameron/Clegg Coalition in the same breath as those momentous Asquith, Attlee and Thatcher governments. However, in one essential respect, a comparison can already be made. The Tory and Lib Dem leaders have shown the same audacity and personal character as their great antecedents. The Coalition has set out with astonishing energy on its tremendous project: nothing less than the reshaping of British politics, the repair of our economy and the rebuilding of Clem Attlee’s now broken welfare state.

Scarcely a day passes without an important new speech or announcement that challenges conventional wisdom and takes Britain into a new direction. Let’s contemplate the events of this week alone. On Wednesday, Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, made an agenda-setting speech – and one that could not have been made by a front-line politician from any mainstream party for more than a quarter of a century.

Speaking to the Relate counselling charity, Mr Duncan Smith produced a blistering defence of marriage, making points that no Cabinet minister has dared to touch on since John Major’s ill-fated and deeply derided Backs to Basics initiative. He stated a simple fact that everybody has known, but few beyond a handful of think tanks (and this newspaper) have dared to articulate: that there is a powerful link between rising levels of crime and poverty and the collapse of marriage as an institution. “Lone-parent families,” as Mr Duncan Smith bravely said, “are more than twice as likely to live in poverty [as] two-parent families.” More disturbing still, he revealed that children from broken homes are nine times more likely to fall into a life of crime.

These facts, without which no serious understanding of the social problems that afflict modern Britain is possible, were regarded as heretical under Labour, and therefore suppressed. Indeed, Mr Duncan Smith revealed in one shocking aside that Labour ministers deliberately deleted all reference to marriage from their official forms, effectively abolishing it from the record.

Sadly, his speech contained no hard proposals to reaffirm the institution of marriage. Even so, it is wrong to understate its significance. Had his remarks been made only a year or two ago, there would have been uproar: Mr Duncan Smith would have been accused of bigotry and targeting single mothers. But his speech instead escaped without any serious challenge, or even criticism.

This silence shows how sharply the parameters of national debate have changed since the creation of the Coalition. Though there is no hard policy yet, Mr Duncan Smith is preparing the ground for a fundamentally change in Government policy towards the family that will take shape over the months to come. Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that this coming Monday, he will publish probably the most revolutionary document of any Cabinet minister over the next few years. His White Paper will set out in detail the Government’s plans to end the culture of welfare dependency which has done so much economic damage, and destroyed so many millions of lives.