Why didn't Nick Clegg join the Conservative party, even though he was pressed to? Why did Vince Cable start his political career with Labour, but move to the Liberal Democrats? It was because neither of them agreed with "the old parties". They wanted to be in a party that chimed with their beliefs more than they wanted careers in a "strong government". Their beliefs, by the way, include the idea that money follows power, and that if you want to redistribute – and make a society more equal – you make devolving power your first priority.
Why did British democracy adopt the power-concentrating first-past-the-post electoral system? It was to provide "strong government". Is it delivering "strong government"? The polls say that it is not. Yet Labour and the Conservatives, both of them up until now stalwart defenders of this system, reckon that they can sprinkle stardust in the eyes of the Lib Dems and suddenly turn them into people that would make all sorts of compromises just to achieve power. But they can't. And how they hate it.
David Cameron, who until recently thought he was a shoo-in for PM, but is now staring at failure under his own terms, says the Lib Dems are "holding the UK to ransom". But only because his previous threat – "Vote Clegg, get Brown" – has been scuppered. Gordon Brown, the man who sulked for a decade because he only got to be the second-most powerful politician in the country, then finally bullied his way into the top job without an electoral mandate, now accuses Clegg of "arrogance".
The Conservatives, no longer on course to "win", but only to "come first", say that a hung parliament would lead to "back-room deals, indecision, weak government and a paralysed economy". That tells us a great deal about the Conservative party's own faith in its negotiating skills. Except really, the Conservatives know exactly what they have been told: that they need not look to the Lib Dems if they wish to prop up a droopy mandate, not unless they would like to refrain from being Conservatives and bring in proportional representation, the essential first step in devolving political power.
And Labour? They have been told that they can expect a coalition only under very specific terms – Lib Dem terms. Vote Tory or Labour, get Lib Dems. Might as well vote Lib Dem and have done with it, saving Britain from that awful hung parliament that the duopoly assures us will be so terrible.