Obviously it was a good day to try and bury bad news, this plus the Mensch story coming out in relatively short order.

It's about time the Lib Dems grew a pair and realised that they hold a substantial amount of power over the Tories and started using it. They've already sold their soul but maybe they can do a tiny amount of good now to counteract the waves and mountains of utter sh|te they've helped the Tories push through.

I think even they know that the numbers of votes they got in 2010 and could no longer count on in the foreseeable future are immense.

They attracted a large student following on their promise of no increase in and hopefully abolition of tuition fees, that will evaporate, no matter how much they try an explain it is "fairer".

Their tokenism over the Health & Social Care Bill has also lost them massive numbers of previous voters, many life-long liberals, who would struggle to reconcile any further support.

The tactical voters, like me, who knowing that in many areas (particularly in the South West), a Labour vote really is a wasted vote and voted LibDem as the lesser of two evils. Even without boundary changes and notwithstanding whatever other misery this bunch of misfits can visit on us in the run-up to 2015, many current LibDem seats will revert to Conservative.

As for the coalition, I can see it running its course. For it not to do so would be seen as a massive failure on both parties. I hope it does endure because Labour is nowhere near ready for either an election and certainly not government. Labour need to start coming up with alternatives to the worst excesses of this bunch. Such as a reversal of the H&SC Bill, an alternative to the likes of Atos and a driving back of free-market economics in the provisions of healthcare, welfare and education.

The LibDems may well lose their leader but Clegg will remain as DPM.

I wasn't aware we could vote on bankers and on a world financial collapse.
Oh wait don't tell me you belive the hype about Labour being able to control the entire world and that they were the ones who decided to slash and burn and strangle any hope of a recovery.
Right?

So what was it that the Lib Dems have got out of the coalition agreement? Oh yes, silly me... ministerial salaries.

As a life long Liberal/LD supporter, they've a lot of recovery work to do to get my vote back.

Been lied to too much, and for nothing.

The Lib Dems are a small party so its obvious they have to be a secondary partner in a coalition government and end up compromising on their principles.

However the Lib Dems want a PR system which generally produces coalitions and so their argument for that is that coalitions work.

So they cannot just take the principled stance and walk away else it destroys their own argument.

They won't walk away and I fully expect yet another u-turn from Camoron, especially when you take a look at the maths:

There are 23 LibDem ministers and if a minister votes against the government, he is expected to resign (before he gets sacked). Three of the ministers are peers, so there are 20 LibDems that either forego their ministerial privileges (and salaries), vote with the government (that wouldn't be popular with their constituency parties) or the simple solution is - they abstain.

So let's look at the maths now:

646 MPs (discounting the speaker & deputies)

305 Conservative
57 LibDems
254 Labour
30 Others

Of the 3 others, 8 are from the DUP, who usually side with the tories

So 305 (con) + 8 (dup) = 313

37 (libdem) + 254 (lab) + 22 (others) = 313

That's assuming that all Conservatives vote with the government, certainly not a cast-iron guarantee, given that some will be in danger of deselection due to merged constituencies. It also assumes that no LibDem minister has the balls to vote against and forego his ministerial bonus, in favour of keeping his constituents happy.

I have also not included the probable Labour gain in Corby, now Mensch has decided to sling her hook

It all becomes too close to call and rather than risk a defeat, I reckon Camoron will suddenly find that there won't be sufficient time in this parliament to debate the issue.

The problem is this is exactly what they didn't do. They were so determined to try and get their holy grails of PR and House of Lords reform they were prepared to wave through hugely unpopular Tory polices. As Cibaman mentioned earlier more concerned with constitutional changes than other policies that the people are bothered about.



If they wanted to convince the voters that coalitions work then they should have put their constitutional aspirations to one side as soon as they saw the proposed NHS changes. Putting a block on that would not only have been sensible in its own right but would also have made a far better case of for a coalition government.

Stopping that bill as soon as the details emerged could hardly be called reneging on the coalition agreement. It may have cost them any attempt at getting legislation through on constitutional reform but it would have been in both their political interests as well as the countries to block it.

It is also apparent that coalition government as the Tories and Lib Dems crafted it was simply to mean the Tories as senior partners got the majority of their flag ship legislation through and the Lib Dems would get much less of theirs through. A kind of 80/20 split if you like. I don't think that is what voters expected a coalition to work like. The fact most Tory policies got through and key Lib Deb ones didn't just makes it look like a coalition government means you get a government of the major partner in all but name.

The fact both parties in the coalition have clearly pursued their own agendas under the smoke screen of being all very principled about forming a government to sort out the economic crisis doesn't make much of a case for coalitions either.

In any case aren't we stuck with this lot until 2015 as they did pass the act whereby we have fixed term parliaments and a government can't be voted out in a no confidence vote unless 55% of MP's vote it out (and the figures do not allow for that)?

I despise Cameron and everything he stands for, but he's fairly transparent in what he values.

Clegg, on the other hand, is far more despicable!

I don't think most voters, and possibly more importantly the UK media, understood anything at all about how a proper coalition works. Otherwise they wouldn't have been howling about how long it took to establish the existing deal.

A 'coalition' agreement thrashed out in 2 weeks of feverish post-election activity, with no preparatory talks between parties prior to the election, was always going to be deeply flawed. It might have been made to work if the Lib Dems had displayed sufficient testicular fortitude, but sadly they just capitulated.