Cameron&
Historians of the coalition government will have to work out how Britain came to be governed so radically by such pragmatists. It is led by a presiding "quad" of ministers - David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander - who were reared on the bloodless managerialism of the 1990s and remain almost physically allergic to ideology. They are also bound by the most tentative of electoral mandates, their coalition itself a monument to the public's inability to decide what kind of government it wanted four years ago.
And still the proofs of their boldness in office accumulate. They are enforcing the most sustained fiscal contraction since the second world war, which should result in the entire expansion of the public sector payroll under 13 years of Labour government being undone in one parliament. Multiple simultaneous reforms of the public services are being attempted - including, in education, a torrential version of the change prime minister Tony Blair managed only in dribs and drabs. And last week's Budget threw pensions policy on to this bonfire of orthodoxies. Pensioners, compelled until now to trade in their savings for often anaemic annuities, will have more freedom to spend their own money.
The point is not that all this must be cheered. In one of those mutations allowed by the English language, the word "radical" has become a compliment but, used strictly, it just describes dramatic change, which is neither innately good nor bad. Whatever one thinks of this government, it is radical in the strict sense. Since 1945 Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher are the only prime ministers to have overseen a greater rupture in domestic affairs than Mr Cameron.
His problem is that many in his own Conservative party cannot bring themselves to entertain this idea. For them, the government is wishy-washy because it is founded on cross-partisan compromise and led by four interchangeable technocrats. What the coalition does in practice weighs less than the ideological dilution it represents in theory. These frustrated partisans exchange fantasies about the Thatcherite blitzkriegs a purely Tory government - even a minority one, if necessary - might visit upon the supply side of the economy or, even better, the EU. However juvenile, this vein of tribalism matters because, if the result of next year's general election is indecisive and Mr Cameron seeks his MPs' approval for another coalition, they are ready to defy him.
The truth, which Mr Cameron cannot utter within earshot of his MPs, is that the coalition has governed much more radically than even a single-party Tory government with a working majority ever could.
This is partly because it has two parties to source ideas from. The rise in the income tax threshold to GBP10,000 and beyond is a Liberal Democrat project, although Mr Osborne, as the chancellor who implements it, gamely contests them for credit.
The pensions reform - a rare example of a new idea in politics, not mulled over by recent governments or much trailed by think-tanks - owes a lot to Steve Webb, the Lib Dem pensions minister, who can talk about "drawdown rates" and "market value reductions" in excruciating detail.
Coalition also drapes a veil of legitimacy over policies too scary for the Tories to get away with by themselves. Austerity introduced by Conservatives alone smells like a vindictive choice - but when it is signed off by two parties, especially two with so little in the way of historical ties, it seems more like unavoidable reality. It is the political equivalent of a second medical opinion: two doctors, not just one with a lousy bedside manner, advising you to have surgery. From the fiscal squeeze to the liberation of pensioners, coalition neutralises incendiary ideas into common sense.
If Tory critics of the coalition believe there are streams of radical ideas blocked up by the Lib Dems, they should cite examples. After four years the best they can come up with are the labour market reforms recommended by businessman Adrian Beecroft and a legislated "guarantee" that a referendum on EU membership will take place in the next parliament. This is not nothing but it is not very much either. And, again, there is no curiosity about whether the radical deeds already undertaken by the government would have happened without the Lib Dems' legitimising presence. The corpus of work since 2010 is waved away as a given. It is anything but.
janan.ganesh@ft.com