The future of British politics and, even more, that of the Lib Dems, is unusually obscure at present, based as they are on a political arrangement that has no peacetime precedent since the development of the modern party system. Lloyd George’s post-First World War coalition was a prolongation of his wartime coalition, which already excluded much of the Liberal Party, and its only possible long-term role – as an anti-Labour front – was one the Tories thought they could play just as well if not better. The so-called National Government formed in 1931 was fraudulent from the moment of its foundation. Its basis was the Conservative Party, buttressed by a handful of former Labour leaders with nowhere else to go, and a fair slice of the Liberal Party. It had a negotiated programme of sorts at the start, but its policies soon became those of the Baldwinite Conservative Party, adjusted to suit the large number of ex-Liberal voters who supported it. That government collapsed in May 1940. Churchill’s wartime administration was a genuine coalition of virtually all the country’s political forces and after its break-up we had no coalitions until 2010.

British politicians from the dominant parties of the day have never been keen on coalitions. They dislike the negotiations required to set them up and believe them inimical to ‘strong’ government. Our electoral system is designed to minimise the need for them, and since 1945 even minority governments have been exceptional. Only one, James Callaghan’s, was based on an agreement with another party, and the collapse of the Lib-Lab Pact brought the end of his administration. The present government is unique in being a peacetime coalition of two complete parties based on a negotiated programme.

We still have no idea how it will end. Just as there are no conventions about how to set up a coalition in Britain, there are no conventions about how a general election should be arranged at the end of its term. Do the parties fight each other? Do they blame each other for such defects as the government acknowledges? Do they stand on different programmes? And, crucially, will there be an electoral pact? Had the Alternative Vote been approved things would have been easier. The Conservatives and Lib Dems, formally or informally, could have directed their second preference votes to each other. Now, unless the two parties agree to parcel out constituencies between them, the ‘government’ vote will be split. For the Lib Dems this could be a disaster. It is possible that in three years’ time the electorate will look more kindly on them than at present, but as things stand they will be lucky to win a seat.

This government was not founded on negotiations in which both sides made real sacrifices. For one thing, the two parties are of very unequal size. The negotiating weight of the Lib Dems is much lighter – it has only one-fifth of the coalition’s MPs – and it was always likely that they would have to make most of the sacrifices. In addition, their negotiators were unrepresentative of the party as a whole; more sympathetic to the Tories and readier to let them get their way. But the two parties had quite different conceptions of government. The Lib Dems were the party of PR, which almost always produces coalition or quasi-coalition governments set up after negotiations which assume the necessity of compromise and sacrifice. They came into the negotiations all too ready to make concessions. Clegg’s willingness to believe the best of the Tories, for instance, led him to accept the bargain by which the Tories secured the redistribution of parliamentary constituencies as part of the government’s programme, while the Lib Dems merely ‘won’ the right to put AV (not even PR) to a referendum. He evidently believed this represented a Tory compromise. It was anything but. Predictably, AV was lost and redistribution will do more harm to the Lib Dems than to anyone else. Like the Labour Party, the Conservatives are a majoritarian party: they believe in one-party government and programmatic purity, which is the reason they oppose electoral reform. They will accept compromise only if it is absolutely inescapable.