There But For The Ingrates Of The Electorate

It would be interesting to know the thoughts of Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown as they watched David Cameron and Nick Clegg at the joint press conference in the rose garden at 10 Downing Street yesterday. Were they ruefully thinking of what might have been?

Talks between Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown before the 1997 election on the possibility of creating a progressive alliance were effectively scuppered by the huge majority won by Labour at that election. A development that Blair would have struggled to sell to his party even if it had been necessary became untenable because there was patently no need to do it.

The unexpected enthusiasm displayed by Cameron and Clegg for an arrangement which appears entirely pragmatic has provoked a sense that we might be witnessing 'a new politics' after all and the non-tribal members of the commentariat have expressed extremely hopeful sentiments about the prospects of its success.

If Cameron and Clegg manage to build a constructive arrangement despite their obvious political differences then imagine what might have been achieved by Blair and Ashdown who had such similarly shaped political antennae?