Gary Streeter MP: We start loving the Coalition or Ed Balls and Ed Miliband will be in Downing Street

Gary Streeter is Conservative MP for Devon South West. He was one of the 81 rebels on an EU referendum and one of last week's 91 rebels on an elected Lords.

If we had been given a vote two years ago about whether we should enter the five year coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats, I would probably have voted no. I favoured a short term fix followed by an early election.

I don’t much like the coalition. In the south west we have fought the yellow perils politically for years and do not care much for their campaigning methods. The difference in mindset between your average Tory and your average Lib-Dem can be worlds apart.

But here’s the thing. We did not win the last election outright. We might win the next election outright, with or without boundary changes, but the odds are against it. In the Conservative party we say we like strong leadership. David Cameron has given us very strong leadership on this issue. It is time to follow it.  I have persuaded myself that it is time for me to stop whingeing about the coalition and start getting behind it.

In the national interest.

Those are not just idle words. It is hugely in the national interest to keep Ed Milliband and Ed Balls out of Downing Street. The global economy looks like it is heading for a hard landing and the Euro Zone crisis is likely to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. I have a growing sense that something very unpleasant is just around the economic corner. So we need a steady hand on the tiller at this time of global crisis. We need stability in government. We need to be able to look ahead for more than just a few months. We need to survive until 2015 and thereafter might even be in coalition again for a further period. We are fortunate to have a Prime Minister with all the skill set to do coalition well.

Gary Streeter: Christians are disadvantaged when the rights of others trump theirs

Gary Streeter is the MP for South-West Devon

Christians in Parliament is a well supported all-party parliamentary group that decided last year to hold an investigation into whether or not Christian freedoms were being squeezed in this country, and so our “Clearing the Ground” select committee-style enquiry was born. This was fuelled in part by an increasing number of high-profile court cases in which Christians seem to have collided with a secular and hostile state steamrollering over their sincerely held beliefs.

The aims of the inquiry were:

• To clarify the situation that Christians in the UK face in their everyday lives.
• To identify any particular challenges that Christians face, in particular identifying what aspects of legislation have created these challenges.
• To identify what changes could be made to address these challenges.
• To encourage Christians to continue to make positive contributions to all aspects of society.

Since last October we have studied written evidence from over 60 groups and taken oral evidence from over a dozen specialist experts. We launched our preliminary report in the House of Commons earlier this week.

We have concluded that, whilst many of us individually feel we have all the freedoms we need to live out our faith as we would wish, this has not been the experience of every believer in the UK in recent years. The right to hang a palm Sunday cross in your electrician’s van, say a discreet prayer for a patient, carry on your bed & breakfast establishment on the basis that unmarried couples whether gay or straight would not be accommodated, display verses of the bible on the screen on your cafe wall - all these and many more examples of conflict between faith and society have been explored. Yes, there is a problem.

A Government worth having: Foreign policy

As part of our Government worth having series we asked a few friends of ConservativeHome to offer 100 word thoughts on how the Conservatives might make some ground on foreign policy.

Alan Mendoza, Executive Director of The Henry Jackson Society: With Labour heading down the route of international irrelevance, Conservatives should have the courage to explore where to stand on:

1. ‘Hard’ and ‘soft’ power – As Joseph Nye, author of Soft Power, acknowledges, both variants should be used in tandem. We must therefore be prepared to move beyond diplomacy if it fails to deliver results, and to equip our armed services for such endeavours.
2. Idealism versus realism – William Hague has stressed ideas such as human rights and democracy, but it unclear whether these or other goals outlined, such as improving relations with autocratic allies in the Middle East, will dominate.
3. Traditional multilateralism or coalitions of the willing – The UN has repeatedly failed to resolve major international crises. A Conservative government should therefore be in the vanguard of coalitions circumventing the vetoes of non-democracies shielding dictators and rogue regimes.

Gary Streeter MP, former Chairman of the Party's International Office: Whilst remaining a steadying whisper in the ear of Uncle Sam, we should carve out our unique British brand of soft power with a hard edge.  We should make the promotion of good governance and democracy building the centre ground of our policy. Diplomacy, aid and know-how, backed up by the excellence of our armed forces, should be our instruments.

We should shift at least £100 million from the aid budget to pour into robust democracy building programmes, especially in the Commonwealth. British aid should be more closely linked to foreign policy and should be withdrawn where a recipient country government falls short. We should be champions for the reform of multi-lateral organisations including the EU and UN.