Unlikely couple will prove impossible bedfellows

We are only at the start of the new Liberal/Conservative era and I already want to ban a phrase. The words I never want to read or hear again are "new politics".

There is no such thing. Politics is about values, the clash of ideas and the resolution of conflicting views.

That is why the coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats is doomed to fragility in spite of what will be a lengthy honeymoon.

At their extraordinary joint press conference yesterday, David Cameron and Nick Clegg were in vivacious form. Afterwards I bumped into a bewildered Tory MP who told me: "I am sure I will wake up in a minute and discover this is a weird dream." For now it is the weird reality and voters who yearn for a "new politics" will be thrilled at first.

Cameron has proven that he is a leader willing to think the unthinkable and act on his adventurous thoughts. He has been generous to the Liberal Democrats, perhaps more so than he needed to be. In one leap he has challenged his party in a way that Tony Blair never did with Labour.

Admittedly Cameron had no choice but to make overtures because of the indecisive result. Blair would have acted similarly in 1997 if Labour had failed to secure an overall majority. Still, Cameron has composed a work on an operatic scale when he could have gone for a three-minute single: five Liberal Democrat Cabinet places, Nick Clegg as his deputy, other Liberal Democrats in the Government.

If I were a Liberal Democrat I would be a little worried about such an embrace and whether they will be in any position to take on Tory candidates in marginal seats at the next election.

Clegg must be acutely conscious of Liberal Democrat supporters watching in a state of anxiety and in some cases despair. They did not vote Clegg to get Cameron. Similarly, Tories did not vote Cameron to get Clegg.

For now the excitement of power will bind the parties together. Few of the new ministers will have served in government before. Excitement will outstrip concern. Other Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs will hope to be ministers at some point. They will behave themselves until their hopes are dashed. The media will love it too at first.

But in the end new politics is like the old politics, a mix of principled conviction and expediency, rooted in a party. If Conservatives were Liberal Democrats they would not have joined the Conservative Party.

At some point conflicting values will become an overwhelming theme, tested by events.

More fundamentally there are limits to how far leaders can move away from their parties. Tony Blair defined himself against his party, but in the end the party put up with it no longer even though he won three elections with big majorities. As such, the so-called new politics is the logical extension of Blairism rather than a break from it, with both leaders testing their parties' ideological flexibility.

In such a context I am unsure how the coalition survives the referendum campaign on electoral reform. Presumably the new Labour leader will campaign for a "Yes" vote alongside Clegg. Cameron will be calling for a "No" vote. Perhaps it will be straightforward for Clegg and Cameron to return in unison, one of them defeated in a referendum, but I doubt it.

The new leader has a chance and a massive challenge. One ex-Labour minister summed up this moment of frail potential: "The coalition will last longer than I think it will."

In politics the future is always unknown. At some point over the next few years the parties will reassert themselves as competing forces. They always do.

- Independent