Is understanding the implications of coalition really that difficult?

There are moments when, as someone who places quite a lot of faith in the basic decency and common sense of the British public, I get a bit depressed. Today saw an example of the sort of seemingly wilful blindness that makes our politics so frustrating.

A commenter on Liberal Democrat Voice, who shall remain nameless, but is a supporter of a political party beginning with L but without a D in it, was raging against the Party for the bedroom tax and the reduction in the top rate of tax to 45%. Liberal Democrats will, he claimed, get wiped out because there are so many people who won't forgive us for enabling the Conservatives to do these things.

One finds oneself wondering what his response will be if Labour have to go into a coalition in order to form a government. Will he expect them to deliver all of their programme, regardless of the view of any junior partner, or will he be comfortable with a degree of compromise in order to deliver key planks of the manifesto? Clearly, he is of the 'no compromise' school of politics, and perhaps he is lucky enough not to have ever been in a position where political compromises have to be made.

I don't like a number of things that Conservatives have wanted to do in government. However, in order that we might do some of the things that we believe are right for the country, we have to let them do likewise, otherwise nothing gets done at all. And, some of the things that Conservatives have required in exchange for taking the working poor out of income tax, long-term pension reform, the Pupil Premium and action on climate change are pretty stupid, or delivered by means that are almost catastrophically inept - the bedroom tax, a cap on net migration, free schools, to name but three. But, if they don't get those, we don't get our stuff.

It is, if you like, a business arrangement.

"But,", I hear my Labour supporting commenter cry, "if you hadn't allowed them to form a government, they couldn't have done all of those terrible things!". And, I must admit, that is true. At least, they wouldn't have been able to do them yet. My Labour friend would have then expected Liberal Democrats to vote down a Queen's Speech, in which the Conservatives would have outlined their plans, even though there was no alternative platform on offer. The result, another General Election, the result of which would have been what exactly?

Labour certainly couldn't have formed a majority administration. They would have had to outline how they were going to address the deficit, or hope that nobody really did, in which case why would those voters who had deserted them return? The Conservatives might have taken some seats from the Liberal Democrats, campaigning on the basis that the country needs a majority government, so wavering Lib Dems should switch to them instead. And, as a better funded party, they might have gained a majority - that would have been a far more likely outcome, although not a guaranteed one.

And, with a majority, you now know what you would have got. Not pretty, eh?

There are, of course, a whole series of counterfactuals, any of which might have come to pass in a second 2010 election, all of them less likely than an outcome where the Conservatives had a majority or were the largest party.

For Labour, it is easy. They will probably never know what it is like to be the junior partner in a coalition at Westminster, or indeed, in Edinburgh or Cardiff. They will expect to dominate any coalition arrangement. But if their members, activists and supporters are incapable of accepting that a third party might have an option other than a partnership with Labour, or that a junior partner might have a wishlist of its own that doesn't sit entirely comfortably with Labour policy, then finding a dancing partner after an inconclusive 2015 General Election might be surprisingly difficult...