Once-rival parties in Britain hold inaugural meeting of new coalition government

Britain’s new coalition gov’t meets for first time

LONDON — Britain’s first coalition government in seven decades held its inaugural meeting Thursday, as members of once-rival parties sat around the Cabinet table together — and signaled their seriousness about deficit-slashing by agreeing to an immediate pay cut.

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron presided over the gathering, sitting across from his deputy, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

There are 18 Conservative ministers and five Liberal Democrats in the new Cabinet. The two parties forged a coalition government — Britain’s first since World War II — after last week’s national election produced a hung Parliament, in which no party has an overall majority. The Tories won 306 of the 650 House of Commons seats, the Labour Party 258 and the Lib Dems 57.

Cameron filled out his government team Thursday with a slew of junior ministerial appointments and visited key government departments to speak to civil servants.

“The more I think about this endeavor on which we have embarked, the more excited I become,” Cameron told staff at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. “Because this coalition government, if we can make it work — and I believe we can — is a five-year government.”

Among the first acts of the new Cabinet, which has said deficit-cutting is its top priority, was agreeing to take a 5 percent pay cut and subsequent five-year salary freeze that the government says will save taxpayers 300,000 pounds ($450,000) a year. The move leaves the prime minister’s annual salary at 142,000 pounds, plus 65,000 pounds for sitting as a lawmaker. Other ministers get slightly less.

Clegg spoke Thursday night with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, after Cameron held phone talks Tuesday with Obama.

“They looked forward to close cooperation between their governments on the shared challenges of Afghanistan, the global economy and international security,” Britain’s Cabinet Office said in a statement. Clegg “stressed that the U.S. and the U.K. acting in harness could make a dramatic difference.”

New ministers emerged from Thursday morning’s Cabinet meeting in 10 Downing St. smiling.

“It went very well,” said Education Secretary Michael Gove. “I was delighted by the sense of partnership and common purpose.”

“It’s like we’d been working together for years,” said Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith.

The right-of-center Conservatives and the center-left Lib Dems have hammered out a policy agreement with compromises on both sides. The third-place Lib Dems get moves toward the electoral reform they have long cherished, while the Tories retain key platform planks including an annual cap on immigration and cuts to public spending to reduce Britain’s ballooning deficit.

Duncan Smith said the government’s main task was “to get the economy back on track.”

A BBC survey of economists who advise the Treasury department found Thursday that most are predicting that the government will raise sales taxes to slash the record 153 billion-pound ($225 billion) deficit.

Most of those questioned predicted an increase in value added tax from its current 17.5 percent to 20 percent before the end of 2011.

Before the election, neither party had refused to rule out the tax increase on goods and services.

Clegg and Cameron have also pledged sweeping reforms to Parliament, civil liberties laws and ties to Europe.

Cameron’s office announced Conservative lawmaker David Lidington and Liberal Democrat Jeremy Browne would serve as junior ministers at Britain’s Foreign Office, under Conservative foreign secretary William Hague.

The Labour Party, relegated to opposition after 13 years in power, is facing a leadership contest following the resignation of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. So far only ex-Foreign Secretary David Miliband has announced his candidacy, but others are expected to follow — including, perhaps, Miliband’s younger brother Ed.

Brown, meanwhile, confirmed Thursday that he will continue to sit in Parliament as a backbench Labour lawmaker. His predecessor, Tony Blair, quit the House of Commons when he stepped down as prime minister in June 2007.

Visiting a college in his Scottish home town of Kirkcaldy, Brown said he hoped to remain in Parliament “for these next few months and years.”

“I may have given up one job, but the job that I love in politics is to be your Member of Parliament, and I hope we’ll be able to work together,” he said.