In Five Days in May, his account of the “raw battle for power” after the last election, Andrew Adonis insists that a coalition between Labour and the Liberal Democrats would have been possible after the 2010 election.
Besides Nick Clegg’s instinctive preference for a deal with the Conservatives and the electoral arithmetic – a Labour-Lib Dem coalition would have been a minority government – the apparent desperation of many Labourites to relinquish power presented another problem. Adonis’ book quotes one MP in the days when a grand ‘progressive alliance’ still looked possible: “We lost the election. By getting out now, we can regroup and we will be back soon. This lot won’t last five years, no chance.”
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