Cameron will need guile and luck

The pageant of democracy is completed once again. David Cameron has pulled off a political coup. As if styling himself the new Disraeli, he is the architect of a new alliance that risks alienating his right wing. He has done the converse of what the centre-left was anticipating as recently as Monday afternoon. He has fashioned a thoroughgoing Liberal Democrat/Tory coalition on the centre-right.

The Liberal Democrats have been offered enough to offer in return what the Tories most need, a Commons majority. Nick Clegg can boast all he likes, but the truth of the matter is that the old enemy has him trapped. His authority over his backbenchers has been trussed and dressed and delivered to Cameron on a silver platter, with the added guarantee of Clegg and some of his colleagues actually taking the Tory shilling. If he fails, Cameron can call an election and massacre the Liberal Democrats at the polls for bringing down a coalition government at a time of national emergency.

First-past-the-post normally gives Britain stable rule. It did not do so last week, when the voters dismissed the incumbent Labour government but with insufficient force to give the Tories a clear majority. Clegg has now had his moment of procreational ecstasy. He pondered his electoral mini-mandate. He rightly considered his options, and should not be accused of delay. The British public have been given a practical seminar in their Constitution as never before. They have also been given an object lesson against any move to electoral reform that might yield permanent hung parliaments — at least if they are to continue to select the nation's executive.

The simple dream of centrists, that somehow a hung parliament would produce the golden chance of securing a path to power, was not going to happen. In crude terms there was never a majority at the polls, however counted, for the sort of proportional representation that would enable the Liberal Democrats to move into a governing position. If they want that, they must still do what Labour did in the early 20th century and overtake one of the two big parties in far more constituencies than at present. They would need to imitate the early Labour party's concentration of voting power in areas of territorial interest, rather than dispersing it as now.

Infeasible

The Labour party has always been unhappy about conceding proportionality, as have the Tories. It was only the undignified bid to defy the election and cling on to power that led Gordon Brown to contemplate changing his party's mind last weekend. The famous "progressive coalition" might have been politically plausible had it made arithmetic sense. But it never did. The residual rainbow coalition was feasible only to the fevered minds gathered on Westminster's College Green outside parliament.

Whatever the temptation, Clegg could not stand aloof and call a curse on both parties. The nation expected him to make a decision, whatever long-term damage it might do to his party's electoral fortunes. From the start, Cameron's tactic was to smother Clegg in the warmest of embraces. He pushed his party to the limit on the alternative vote since he knew he needed the security of a full coalition. It offered his whips more than a vague "confidence and supply" deal. The Liberal Democrats needed to be well and truly on board.

They will be shackled, but just vocal enough to enable Cameron to keep his own right wing under control.

All this could hardly be more fragile. Cameron clearly hopes to derive strength from that fragility, from being in a position to call another election when he chooses. But it will not be that easy. He must deliver a country that is at present lukewarm towards his party, results beyond the bounds of what is reasonable. He must show superhuman powers of parliamentary diplomacy. He must be as remarkable a leader as indeed was Disraeli — and he was also lucky.

Clegg lives to fight another day, but in what seems a desperate position. To be deputy to a Tory prime minister may sit happily on the shoulders of a former aide to a Tory Eurocrat (Lord Brittan), but it will not sit well on the shoulders of many in his party. He has trapped his parliamentary party between the rock of his coalition promise and the hard place of his MPs' possible rebellion. If the architecture of coalition collapses, he will be blamed up and down the hustings. He cannot now retreat. His is no vague common flirtation. It is the full consummation of marriage that is implied by coalition government.

Cameron, meanwhile, must know that at any turn his partner might fail him and he will have to go to the country. He cannot let his guard drop. Today's ally may be tomorrow's election foe. That is why we are witnessing only the start of a volatile year in British politics. Whatever form electoral reform takes, a system that repeats the past week cannot be imagined. But that starts the debate rather than finishes it. For the present, the most likely outcome will be an early return to the ballot box, and a repeat of this week's pageant.