Talk of a new Labour-Lib Dem coalition is in the air. This is piquantly nostalgic to those of us whose earliest political memories were forged in the fire of the red-hot excitement of David Steel and Jim Callaghan’s short-lived Lib-Lab pact of 1977-78.

My initial reaction, along with many others I’m sure, was a guttural ‘oh God no’. But a moment later a different aspect of it occurred to me, in a fine example of what the young people call ‘cope’. My banter senses started to tingle. Because, yes, it would drag out and exacerbate the country’s current despairing decline. But it would also be hilarious.

PR might very well remake British politics, but not in the way that the progressives intend

There is something inherently funny about coalitions. Watching politicians who despise each other pretending to be great mates is entertaining enough when they are at least members of the same party. When they’re thrown together across the benches through expediency, it’s comedic gold. Look how popular and successful the last one was. The Lib Dems were rewarded for their selfless stand on behalf of political stability by being hoiked out of office at the earliest available opportunity and crushed electorally for the best part of a decade. But not before we got such splendid sights as Danny Alexander (remember him?) waving a yellow box at the press and saying how awful the Budget was; the same Budget that he had approved the day before.

From the Lib Dem point of view, the price of a coalition with Labour would be, as ever, the glittering prize of proportional representation. It is said that Keir Starmer is open to this idea, but then we must remember how quick he is to give his word. The idea that PR will lead inevitably to a progressive panacea and keep those beastly Tories and other nasty right-wing politicians out of power forever has always struck me as breathtakingly naive. It seems strange that the very same ‘progressive’ people who routinely suggest that the public are gammons are so keen to hand those gammons the power of kingmakers.

I fear the Lib Dems could be falling into a trap of their own making here. Actually, I don’t fear it, I think it would be hysterical. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that with a different electoral system, people will vote in a totally different way, and politicians will behave in a totally different way. PR might very well remake British politics, but not in the way that the progressives intend. Look how quickly and successfully the Brexit party triumphed. Richard Tice, the leader of Reform UK (the post-Brexit party), wants PR as much as the Lib Dems.

If the Lib-Lab coalition is a goer in 2024, which horses will be traded? Where are the areas of agreement? The recently leaked policy wheezes of Labour give us some clues, with their harebrained schemes for making it a human right not to turn up at the office and enabling going on strike to be easier. It’s easy to imagine Ed Davey rubber-stamping those. Like the Lib Dems, Labour is forever saying people just don’t care about ‘culture war’ issues – but they are also planning a public inquiry into the ‘battle’ of Orgreave and the occupation at the Cammell Laird factory; events of 40 years ago, and the hot topics on everybody’s lips. I mean, why stop there? Let’s have a full public inquiry into ‘Agadoo’ and Hazell Dean while we’re at it.

Starmer has his own plans for the electoral system. As he maybe can’t win outright as it stands, his idea is to swap the current electorate for one that likes him – EU nationals and 16-year-olds.

It is hard to take any commitment from Starmer seriously, as he’s such a flagrant, blatant breaker of oaths.  By the time you’ve thrown your haymaker he has often obligingly punched himself in the face. For what is sworn and pledged today can be unsworn and de-pledged tomorrow. He is swept up like a skittish 14-year-old in the slipstream of every passing fad, whatever it might be, from taking the knee to ‘trans rights’, which he will drop the moment they slip out of fashion.

He has stabbed so many people in the front, from the corporate ‘LGBTQ+ community’, to both remainers and leavers, to his own Corbynite party members.  One wonders, why does he actually want power? For what? Is it really worth being prime minister just to rule depending on how he feels and who he has to cosy up to that particular day? Is being ‘not the Tories’ enough for him? What a dreary, stunted ambition.

New Labour at least gave the impression that it knew what it was doing, thanks to falling into the clover of a golden economy. The moment the bills finally came in it was finished. Starmer has no such wiggle room or fair weather, and only the Lib Dems for succour. Labour, the supposed party of working people, are in fact horrified that there are still voters out there who have the sheer temerity not to share the manners and frequently crackpot ideas of the progressive section of the upper middle class.

And that is what Labour and the Lib Dems really have in common, all that is left after the boiling off; the residue of wounded self-righteousness, the tinkering and tampering with things that work and shrugging ‘so what’ at things that don’t, imposing the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion culture that despises the public and crying ‘you’re imagining it’ when the public notice. So yes, a Lab-Lib coalition would be awful. But it would give us years of material.