He’ll never admit it, but David Cameron is already plotting another deal with Nick Clegg

David Cameron is honest to a fault — or so he told us this week. While cooking lunch in the kitchen of his Oxfordshire home, he was asked, in terms, whether this is the last election he’ll fight as party leader. Yes, he said, it was. He was then kind enough to name three potential successors. And when shortly afterwards broadcast journalists grew greatly excited by this, he said he had done nothing more than give a ‘very straight answer to a very straight question’.

But there is another question to which he will not give a straight answer: is he preparing for another coalition? The Prime Minister knows the official response: of course not, he’s fighting for a majority. He is adamant that no one on his team is planning for a hung parliament, and he won’t even discuss the matter because he wants to win outright. But behind closed doors, he doesn’t bother to maintain the fiction. In private, what the Prime Minister discusses is his plans for the next coalition deal.

The Spectator knows of at least two detailed discussions that Cameron has had on the topic in recent weeks. He said the same in both: no matter what they might hear to the contrary, he does not want to run a minority government. In the likely event of another hung parliament, he would prefer coalition. So the outcome of the general election will be decided by two battles: one at the ballot box, and the other behind closed doors — away from (and, in some cases, running contrary to) what was said on the campaign trail.