A rare peacetime coalition – or a minority Tory government?

So David Cameron, not satisfied with giving Nick Clegg parity in the debates, is now offering coalition government with Cabinet jobs.

This would be an extraordinary development for his party and all politics. Not at all clear that the Lib Dem MPs who meet tomorrow and may have a few more meetings after that will want to sign up to life linked at the hip to a Eurosceptic, Cameroon Tory Party.

David Cameron’s press conference was an extraordinary moment, but the Tory team decided the voters had left them with no choice. They could not afford to look like they were walking away from what a substantial chunk of the voters seemed to want.

The Lib Dems likewise need to respond in a way that looks like they’ve been listening to the voters without selling their birthright.

Lib Dem MPs I spoke to today were wary of David Cameron’s offer and thought the list of caveats (he implied he wanted to keep the cap on immigration, keep Trident out of any defence review and keep the referendum lock on future European integration but he wasn’t specific) sounded like an offer he knew they would refuse, a way of putting the onus back on them, the parties playing some sort of pass the parcel bomb game with the painful results the electorate had gifted them. 

The first the Tory shadow Cabinet knew about the coalition offer was a conference call just at 2pm just before David Cameron told the world. Nobody feinted, I’m told, but I gather than Liam Fox and Chris Grayling both raised worries that the leadership mustn’t get too far ahead of the party.

I’ve spoken to some backbenchers this afternoon who echo that concern in slightly more graphic language.

Face to face talks between the parties start tonight. In the space of a few short hours the parties have had to contemplate the sort of arrangement that would normally take many years to germinate.

It may well come to nothing, and the smart money is still on a Tory minority administration. But if it didn’t, a rare peace-time coalition would have been foisted by the voters on British political life, leading the evolution of politics who knows where?