British politics returns to normal: Blue vs Red with Yellow on the touchline – Spectator Blogs

British politics is returning to normal. The two-party system is back. That, it seems to me, is the chief conclusion to be drawn from this year’s conference season*. The opposition have been supplanted by Labour and we’re back to the familiar sight of watching the Conservatives and Labour knock lumps out of one another.

It is not just that the Lib Dem conference seems to have taken place months ago (though it’s partly that) but that the guest list for the next general election has been agreed and Nick Clegg’s party isn’t on it. The Liberal Democrats? Who they?

For a long time now, the government has been weakened by the failure to resolve the tensions at the heart of the coalition. For a while this had one advantage: for as long as people were talking about the government’s internal differences they weren’t talking about what Labour offered as an alternative. Since the media only rarely has room for more than one conversation, that shut Labour out.