COMMONS CONFIDENTIAL

The Liberal Democrats are in a coalition government with the Conservatives.  I’ve tried saying it out loud and I still don’t believe it.

Clearly any hope that a “progressive coalition” could be cobbled together between Labour and the Lib Dems was a non-runner. The ferocity of the opposition to that prospect from so many Labour MPs made it an impossibility.

And we have been hearing the old cry that a period in opposition will be a good thing because it will allow the party to renew and refresh around a thrusting, youthful new leader. Didn’t we hear that in 1979 and even from Tories in 1997.

It appears Gordon Brown was absolutely genuine in his desire to create a centre-left alliance with Nick Clegg, but he couldn’t deliver his party, he couldn’t throw off the perception it would be a desperate coalition of losers,  and the heart went out of it pretty quickly.

Most believed such a coalition would have been hugely difficult to sustain, probably even more believed it was simply impossible. Those who saw it as an opportunity for the centre left (guilty) were in  a minority.

And there are plenty of Labour MPs who believe they have been spared a suicide pact with Clegg that would have ultimately damaged both parties equally and ensured the election of a Tory majority government within a couple of years.

Will it last?

Those MPs are now convinced this is the best possible outcome for Labour in the long term. They reckon Lib Dem voters who backed Clegg in the hope it would keep Cameron out of Downing Street are furious and will now switch to Labour.

Even better, they hope, the Lib Dem parliamentary party will eventually fracture under the strains of maintaining this unlikely coalition, with MPs defecting to Labour.

And how many Lib Dems believe they will ever now get full PR?  If they are lucky they might get AV – a mixed blessing as far as they are concerned – but even that will be a struggle.

And how many believe this deal will last a full parliament? Certainly the coalition seems to have woven the party’s top team into the very fabric of the Tory government – so much so, in fact, that there may even be the alternative danger that the party is simply swallowed up by the Tories.

Labour’s best hope now is that this ends in tears – a pretty good bet – and that the next Labour government will be returned with a large majority and the Lib Dems will be decimated.

If Nick Clegg signs up to a deal, any deal, with David Cameron that does not guarantee an early referendum on voting reform he will be pitching his party back into third-place irrelevance, and probably signing his own resignation note at the same time.

Unless Cameron executes a massive about-face and agrees to that referendum – and that would spark near mutiny in his own ranks – what exactly would Clegg have to show for a deal?

He will have put Cameron into No 10 and helped him get his Queen’s Speech, but there will be huge pressure on Cameron from his own party to break out of any deal as soon as possible. So there will be a second general election within months. That is likely in any case.

It will be called when the Tory government is confident of an outright victory and the chances of the Lib Dems then realising their dream will be gone for the foreseeable future.

So what exactly will Clegg have got out of it apart from a brief spell “in power” – a few of his manifesto pledges? Not even that can be guaranteed.

He will go down in Lib Dem history as the man who had the holy grail in his hands and threw it in the bin.

Stumbling block

So, surely, the only possible answer is to announce that, despite his best efforts, he cannot deal with Cameron because the Tory leader has, in Clegg’s words, set his face against modernising Britain’s outdated, discredited and unfair voting system.

Then, sadly, he will be forced to look to Labour as the only party that understands the public’s demands for radical change to the political system in the wake of the expenses scandal etc, etc – his words, again.

Will Brown be able to deliver that referendum? It might prove difficult but certainly not impossible. Probably the biggest stumbling block would be Labour opponents – but the arithmetic is far from clear cut.

There would be wrangles over exactly what sort of voting reform and what the referendum question would be but there would be huge momentum to get it sorted.

None of this, by the way, would stop the government continuing to govern.

The second election, which would still follow (and probably with a new Labour leader) would then almost certainly be fought under the new system and Clegg would be the man who transformed Britain’s politics.

Even if it all went horribly wrong, at least he would be the man who had seized the moment.

Perhaps it won’t be such a long weekend after all. Reading between the lines of statements by Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown it seems highly likely there will be a Lib-Lab government – perhaps by Monday.

First, we had the Prime Minister setting out the rules that will govern the creation of the next government, including giving cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell an oversight role in negotiations between the parties.

Then the Lib Dem leader re-stated his campaign statement that the party with the most seats and votes must be given the first option to form a government. That is the Tories.

But he then set out a series of demands on electoral and political reform that most assume Cameron – and at least his party -  will not be able to accept.

However, assuming all this is correct, it still leaves numerous questions to be answered over the next few days.

What exactly will Clegg demand on political reform – and a speedy referendum on the issue must be top priority – what will he expect in terms of any seats in cabinet and how long will such a deal last are just for starters.

The Lib Dem leader has certainly seized the once-in-a-generation opportunity but, thanks to a hugely disappointing showing for his party, his hand is far less strong than he might have hoped.

It certainly seems the case that, if the deal is done, Brown will remain PM for some time. Not only does Clegg not have the muscle to demand his head but the prospect of changing the prime minister after this extraordinary election might appear a demand too far.

Just how all this might play with voters is another question.

Anarchists have a wonderful slogan – it doesn’t matter who you vote for, you always end up with the government. This time, however, they may just be proved wrong.

As the historic 2010 election campaign raced to a close, the polls continued to suggest Britain might not have a government on Friday morning.

It won’t be anarchy, of course, despite some of the dire warnings from business leaders and the Tory party about the  effect a hung parliament would have on the economy.

But there would be a period of frantic manoeuvring as the strongest party – whatever that might mean on the day – tried to stitch up deals with other parties or considered attempting to rule as a minority government.

The outcome of the “long weekend” following an indecisive result on Thursday night/Friday morning is anybody’s guess. And the whole thing could end up landing voters with another election in a few months’ time.

Two-party grip
All that uncertainty has helped make the 2010 general election one of the most exciting and genuinely unpredictable for decades.

Thanks to the first-ever televised leaders’ debates, it became an X Factor election which handed the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg a once-in-a-generation opportunity to break the two-party grip, as he kept saying.

There will be plenty of argument over the relative pros and cons of the debates, the tightly-controlled format and the suggestion they turned the entire campaign into a personality contest with little scrutiny of policy. But they are here to stay.

Similarly, the internet played its part – if not to quite the extent many had predicted – with users bombarded with messages from the parties and the blogosphere awash with twitters.

And there was evidence that the greatest impact of the net was on young people who have previously failed to engage with election, logging on to election and political websites.

The Tories event went so far as to buy the top slot on U Tube for polling day tomorrow, so anyone using the service won’t be able to avoid a “Vote Tory” ad.

The final day, though, was all about the party leaders racing around the country trying to grasp whatever votes may still be available to them.

Each of them made a big speech repeating the themes of the campaign and trying not to look washed out, and certainly not washed up.

The consensus seemed to be that Gordon Brown was making ground, Nick Clegg was losing it and David Cameron was hanging on just in front of the other two.

But absolutely nobody was making any confident predictions about how this contest will end.

The only certainty, however, is that we will eventually end up with a government. Almost certainly.

If you want to avoid being canvassed by our political leaders over the next 48 hours then best stay indoors.

With the election result still hugely unpredictable, they are all trying to outdo each other over how many miles they can cover and how many voters they can meet in just two days.

Today started with Gordon Brown saying he would take responsibility if Labour loses the election and hinting that he might “go off and do something else.” As if he would be given the choice.

The only question over Brown’s future if he loses will be how quickly the party moves against him – with or without Nick Clegg’s possible demands for a coalition deal.

That outcome would undoubtedly delight Labour’s North West Norfolk candidate, Manish Sood, who declared Brown was the worst British prime minister ever.

He was offered plenty of air time to change his tune or explain, in that lovely phrase previously used by a minister,  that “my words did not represent my views” but he chose not to, preferring to explain in greater detail just why Brown was the worst PM ever.

He wants a return of the Labour party of the 60s and 70s. You know, the one that kept losing elections.

Why did he wait until now to make his views widely known? Presumably because had he done so earlier he would have been removed as Labour’s candidate – it’s too late now.
Bad tactics
Meanwhile, in a move branded “desperate” by the other parties, three senior Labour figures, including Ed Balls, urged people to vote tactically to stop David Cameron winning on Thursday. They denied that was an admission of defeat.

Cameron used the calls to repeat his message that a vote for the Lib Dems was a vote to keep Brown in Downing Street.

Nick Clegg told people they should not let the other two leaders tell them how to vote but they should vote with their hearts.

Behind all this frantic activity is the suggestion that an unprecedented number of voters still haven’t made up their minds who they are going to vote for – maybe as many as 30%.

So all the party leaders fear, or even hope, that the polls are not giving them the full picture and that this campaign is still wide open.

And that means they cannot take their feet off the throttle of their campaigns until the last possible moment.

So, be warned, they may be heading your way.