Can the new national coalition government survive? Nick Raynsford is sceptical while the emergence of a coalition government is a novel experience to everyone in England under the age of 65, such arrangements are common in many local authority areas, as well as in the other nations which make up the UK.

So, are there lessons to be learned from local experience that may be relevant to the newly-created Liberal Conservative Government at Westminster?

The first and obvious one is that much depends on the motivations of key players. Where the link is a short-term marriage of convenience with a shelf-life no longer than the next electoral opportunity to secure an outright majority, the coalition is unlikely to prove lasting.

The regime of annual elections in many local authority areas inevitably adds to the potential instability. But even where councils are elected for a full four-year term, the prospects of change, either as a result of by-elections, defections or resignations, can make it difficult to hold a coalition together.

This is one of the key influences on the new coalition at Westminster. While many electors would have preferred a ‘progressive’ coalition linking Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens and some of the members returned in Wales, Northern Ireland and possibly Scotland, the electoral arithmetic made this a very fragile prospect. It might have lasted, but could equally have proved vulnerable to short-term fluctuations in political fortunes and preferences.

While the Liberal Conservative coalition has a notionally more solid House of Commons majority, it is certainly not immune from the pressures of political events. Like most other coalitions, this is an accommodation between two different parties with fundamentally-opposing views on certain issues. Electoral Reform and nuclear energy are just two such issues.
v While they can sign up to this ‘agree to differ’ clause in the first flush of working together, the tensions likely to be created by Conservatives campaigning against change to the voting system in the promised referendum, and Liberals speaking out against new nuclear power stations when the National Policy Statement is being debated, could prove more challenging.

Unlike local government, Parliament has, up to now, never been subject to fixed election dates, and the absence of such a framework clearly adds to this uncertainty. By convention, once a government loses a vote of confidence, even by one vote, the prime minister must resign and this usually prompts a general election. To try to guard against such a possibility, the Liberal Conservative coalition has given a commitment to fixed-term parliaments, and has sought to limit the scope for intervening elections with a deeply-tainted proposition that a general election within the fixed dates requires the support of 55% of MPs.

Not only does this hold out the prospect of paralysis at Westminster, with no party or grouping of parties able to command a majority, and no possibility of a general election to resolve the issue, it also smacks of short-term expediency. For the Conservatives currently account for 47% of the MPs at Westminster – sufficient to block the 55% threshold required for a general election

Irrespective of the electoral arithmetic, the viability of coalitions also depends on two other crucial factors. One is the personal chemistry between the key players in the different parties.

It is early days and difficult to judge how this will develop, but initial suggestions imply that the Cameron/Clegg relationship is easier and more comfortable than that between George Osborne and Vince Cable. Political aficionados will be watching closely to see how these relationships – and, indeed, several others – develop under the pressures of time and events.

There is also the crucial question of how backbench MPs and party activists throughout the country respond over time.

The coalition between Lloyd George’s Liberal supporters and the Conservatives collapsed in 1922 when Tory backbenchers decided they had had enough. While the current Tory MPs’ Backbench Committee – whose very name reflects those momentous events of 88 years ago – has been happy to endorse the coalition to see David Cameron into Downing Street, its patience could well be stretched.

Nor have I even begun to explore the potential reaction of party activists. Already there are signs of real unhappiness among many Lib Dem supporters about the role their party has played in helping the Conservatives back into government. As the threatened budget cuts begin to bite, this may prove potentially very threatening to the Lib Dem party’s prospects.

So, those who are forecasting a full-term of coalition government are putting hope ahead of experience. In the short term, the two coalition partners have no option but to hold together. Whoever sought to wreck the agreement in its first year would face ridicule and probably electoral humiliation.

But, looking beyond the summer of 2011, I wouldn’t be taking bets against another general election.

Nick Raynsford is a former local government minister