I must have been on magic mushrooms because at a party last week I heard myself praise home secretary Theresa May and justice secretary Ken Clarke and then watch a group of left-leaning friends, who cheered Labour's victories of the past, nod in agreement. Despite George Osborne's budget, despite what we know is coming down the pike in the way of spending cuts, unemployment, the erosion of pensions and the possibility of a deeper recession, the coalition is popular, or at least tolerated, because the daily exercise of power seems more humane, reasonable and commonsensical than at any time during the last five years under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Quite simply, the tone of government has changed and this is due to something more basic than the relationship between David Cameron and Nick Clegg, although that counts for a lot: it is the sense that government respects the public more than previous Tory administrations, which were divisive and inflicted pain unnecessarily, and more than Labour, which instituted an era of control and nagging suspicion that was accompanied by unbelievable profligacy. There are truly great monuments to Labour's devotion to education, health and public amenities, but the nation's accounts are littered with follies too. As the coalition draws away from the Labour years, it is hard not to be struck first by the scale of the waste under Labour and then by the leaden feeling that the party blew a big opportunity.
From health to foreign relations, from defence to civil liberties, the coalition has moved with degrees of fair mindedness and deliberation that are refreshing. To be sure, there have been blunders, like Michael Gove's botched announcement on scrapping new schools, but it surely is right to suggest that doctors be put in charge of spending GPs' £80bn budget, to remove the target culture from the health service and provide 24-hour cover. The withdrawal from Sangin and setting a deadline for ending combat in Afghanistan is welcome, as is the review of defence needs and spending. For once, our relations with the world appear to be conducted by grown-ups without displays of fawning or self-importance.
The sense of a debate between the coalition parties and of the openness about where disagreements lie is certainly novel when you recall the intrigue between the Blair and Brown camps. Given the monolithic Labour party machine and its exclusive approach to power, perhaps it is not so surprising to find that the Conservative and Lib Dem leaders are on far better terms than Blair and Brown ever were. They are, as a senior member of the coalition put it, strapped to the mast together; they draw strength from each other and they understand the difficulties that each may face within his own party and work round them.
Journalists like a divorce more than a wedding, but the coalition is working better than the prenuptials might have suggested because Cameron and Clegg get on and, crucially, share a view of the state which is fundamentally distinct from the absolute, centralised authority nurtured by Blair and Brown. They've been able to demonstrate the conviction with more than glib abstractions.
In two months, the coalition has announced the ending of the wasteful and, as it turns out, dangerously insecure children's database, ContactPoint, as well as the ID card scheme. Immigration minister Damian Green put an end to the inhumane detention of thousands of children belonging to asylum seekers. Theresa May has agreed to examine the way the police are collecting and storing photographs and data about legitimate protesters, like 85-year-old peace campaigner John Catt who was classified as a "domestic extremist". She has also said that the automatic number plate recognition system that tracks and records 10 million vehicle journey per day will be placed under statutory regulation and scrutinised for the first time. CCTV cameras used to watch Muslims in Birmingham have been disabled. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act terror laws, used by councils to spy on members of the public, are to be reserved for counterterror operations. And in the last week the home secretary suspended section 44 of the Terrorism Act which allowed police to stop and search 250,000 innocent people last year alone, and Cameron announced details of a full judicial inquiry into allegations that British intelligence officers were involved in the torture of terror suspects.
For the past five years, the Observer has campaigned on all these issues and more, but I never hoped I'd be writing the above paragraph so soon after the election. There is real satisfaction to be taken from the announcement of a torture inquiry just months after a British foreign secretary – David Miliband – had done his utmost to suppress details by going to court. This is good government wherever you stand on the ideological spectrum, and the rest of these actions should be given more than a grudging welcome by those who argue that cuts are the only way to assess the coalition. Let's remember that there is just 1% difference between Labour and coalition proposals on cuts.
There is much more to come with Clegg's freedom bill in the autumn. However, I worry that the home secretary did not reduce 28-detention without charge to 14 days, which was in her power, or put a stop to control orders. And while Clarke has announced intelligent new sentencing guidelines, he is considering removing prosecution and defence lawyers from police stations, which is one of the vital guarantees against police abuse provided by 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act legislation.
When the Lib Dem leadership says that this will be "a genuinely liberal parliament", there is acknowledgement that they have bonded with the Tories beyond the need to respond to the fiscal crisis and this will be just as important in the final account. We are watching something miraculously like a minor restoration and it is important not to swallow the line that we could have avoided cuts by ignoring Labour's attack on liberty and voting for Gordon.
It may be illogical but somehow the waste of taxpayers' money under Labour and the targeting of individual rights became almost the same issue in my mind. This was a government that thought nothing of spending £600m on public CCTV, while fewer crimes were being solved each year by CCTV, and billions on databases when no improved productivity or clear benefit had ever been articulated. One wonders, for instance, how HM Revenue and Customs managed to spend £35m on the Business Link website and why the UK Trade and Investment website invested £4m to gain 28,000 users per month. I guess another person's money is like their freedom – it's never quite as valuable as your own.