Game on for a Lib Dem-Tory coalition

All change again at Hogwarts. The Tory shadow cabinet member who told me at 9am it was all over for Con-Libbery now acknowledges it would appear to be game very much back on.

Last night’s two-hour meeting of the Lib Dem MPs (with a sprinkling of peers) seems to have swung the party decisively behind a Lib-Con coalition deal. An announcement is widely expected now today.

There are last-minute talks going on between Labour and the Lib Dems right now but that was not the deal that the Lib Dem leader and his negotiating team were steering the party towards last night.

Danny Alexander told MPs that the Labour negotiating team (or more precisely one half of it – the two Eds, Miliband and Balls) were not giving off good vibes. The whole body language of the Labour parliamentary party was bad. Ministers were knackered and most had already disengaged from their jobs. These opening addresses changed the mood music from the afternoon meeting.

A key early speech was from Vince Cable. He has been remarkably silent since the talks began. Last night he began, like most contributors to the debate, with a “heart beats on the left, I never thought I’d be saying this” sort of approach. Then he acknowledged the arguments of the leadership.

Later speakers included David Heath who pointed out how the overlap with the Conservatives on areas like civil liberties wouldn’t have been there in earlier years.

A key mover in the debate was the sense that Labour might talk about voting reform but they would not have the parliamentary strength or the internal discipline in the Labour party to deliver it.

The Lib Dem MPs’ debate – it finished at 0030 – heard that the Tory AV referendum would be “soon” and before the next election. In theory, assuming a victory for the AV cause, the last election could be the last to be held under the pure first past the post system. Fixed term parliaments would become law. The tax threshold could go up in phases.

I spoke to one of those Lib MPs who is agonising over the whole deal and he sounded still wary, nervous and uncomfortable. But he acknowledged that it would be coalition not an arms-length deal, the earlier meeting saw off “confidence and supply” and that his party was probably moving towards it some time today. The MPs would need to give it 75 per cent support, then the federal executive, a bunch of “difficult buggers” one MP said, would have to give it the same.

Earlier, a Tory MP, frustrated by the Lib Dem divisions between the brogue-wearing “modernisers” and the lefty sandal-wearers said the “right foot doesn’t know what the left foot is wearing”.