A Conservative-Lib Dem coalition is most likely, but it's not sustainable
Labour voters switching to Clegg will probably put Cameron into No 10. But there will be huge strains on the new government
As this election campaign gets stranger and stranger, it is leading us into a warped, hallucinogenic wonderland. The political colours blur and wobble. The possible outcomes multiply. Soon we'll need a parliamentary version of chaos theory – quantum politics, perhaps.
It starts with "strange attractors" – the growing likelihood of a Tory-Lib Dem coalition government, with David Cameron and Nick Clegg sending out cautious coded messages of mutual interest. Among all the possible outcomes, from a straight Tory victory through to a Lib-Lab coalition or pact, this one has been least analysed. Yet if the polls are any guide, a blue-yellow deal is on the cards.
Before we look at how strange that would be, it's worth looking at how the battle is going, at least according to the party machines. The Lib Dems seem to be holding off the Tory challenge in the West Country and parts of southern England, and may take some eminent Tory scalps. So the Tories are switching their firepower north, to hammer at Labour in their heartland areas.
They are doing this because they think a catastrophic collapse of the Labour vote is quite possible. The West Midlands, the Pennines and a few parts of the south, mainly in London, are the prime Labour-Tory battlegrounds. Conservative high command now thinks national victory may come from digging deeper into the Labour areas than it had previously hoped.
Senior Labour people are spooked too, and argue that the new popularity of Clegg and friends means some of their voters may defect to the Lib Dems, and allow in the Tories across swaths of the north. Maybe, but Cameron remains unpopular there, and his recent gaffe about hitting the north hardest won't have helped. My guess is Labour will hang on to its core areas, while being in danger of coming third in the national vote. As Clegg made clear today, this would make it all but impossible for him to do a deal with Gordon Brown.
Let's go back, then, to the surreal thought of a deal between a minority Conservative government and the Lib Dems. Where to start? The most Eurosceptic of the main parties yoked together with the most Euro-enthusiastic? The great defenders of Trident in alliance with their opposites? Anti-immigration rhetoric striding arm in arm with pro-migrant policies? Cut-now, help-the-rich economics in alliance with Lib Dem redistributionists?
Admittedly, there are some areas of common ground. If Cameron's Big Society means anything, it is not so far from the Lib Dems' traditional localism. Both parties have greened their economic thinking; both are critical of Labour over civil liberties; both think the past 13 years have been too statist and centralist. But overall, the yawning gaps between Cameron and Clegg would make this a truly bizarre marriage.
Its oddness is underlined by the fact that so many people who were once on the Labour left, and consider themselves socialists, or at any rate radicals, have been thinking of voting Lib Dem. On tax, Trident, Europe, immigration, human rights, Iraq and the environment they now see the Lib Dems as further to the left than Labour. "You're on the wrong side of history," senior Lib Dems tell them, "you're stuck in the wrong party; come over to your natural home." And to a lot of thoughtful, progressive people this makes perfect sense.
So imagine if all those left-leaning voters produced a Cameron-led government? What would the Lib Dem grassroots make of it all? Would they even allow Clegg and Vince Cable to go into coalition government with their traditional enemies – and remember, in theory at least, the activists do have a say in all this. Clegg's fairly brutal rejection of any deal with Labour while Brown was still prime minister may be shrewd electoral politics – "vote Clegg, get Brown" is the most effective Tory line against the Lib Dems. But it's deeply felt, too, deriving from Clegg's personal dislike of Brown and of our weird electoral system. The trouble is, it inevitably pushes Clegg towards Cameron.
Cameron, meanwhile, is returning the favour. He changed his game over the weekend in two significant ways. First, he has let it be known he has an open mind about some kind of electoral reform. I think it's a honey-trap and that the Conservatives would block change. But it's an unmistakable signal of Cameron's desperate readiness to do a deal with Clegg if he has to.
Second, Cameron's announcement that no "unelected" prime minister should be allowed to occupy Downing Street without a general election following within three months is an early move against Labour switching leaders to stay in power. If Brown resigned and David Miliband was installed by the cabinet, Cameron would call foul.
But the move to stop parties changing their leaders in office would, of course, also benefit Cameron directly. Even if he becomes prime minister, the Tory right will still be after him and sharply critical of his electoral performance. A "principled" stand against changing the man at the top would bolster … er, the man at the top. If you judge "political reform" by asking always whether it benefits the person suggesting the change, then this Cameron ploy is doubly suspicious.
The more I look at the prospect of a Con-Lib coalition, the more I think it is not sustainable for long. The pressures of hostile Liberal grassroots and the visceral differences between the parties would bust it up. There's no way Cameron would really concede change to the voting system – rather, he would pull the plug at a time of his choosing, blame Clegg and Cable for "chaos", and call a second election. A bored and irritated electorate would then probably punish the Lib Dems.
Labour, meanwhile, would be busily tearing itself to pieces on the sidelines. The briefing about who is to blame has already started, long before the voters have delivered any verdict. Brown's the disaster, say the Blairites, plotting meanwhile for a deal with Libs. It's all Mandelson, say the Brownites. This has the potential to be so nasty it finally breaks Labour into two.
It's incredibly hard to see Labour winning this election. It's also very hard to see how, in practical terms, Labour could change leaders, hang on as a minority, and do a deal with the Lib Dems to change the voting system. But that's the last hope left for progressive political change. It rests on calm calculation, tactical voting and cool heads. And the chances of that are?
