The Coalition mating game

There are ornately-feathered birds in New Guinea that have less bizarre mating rituals than Labour and the Lib Dems. The two parties need to show that it isn’t impossible to work with one another in a future coalition while also keeping their own supporters reassured that they’re not desperately keen to jump into a bed with another party that activists find themselves embroiled in dirty by-election and local fights with. Hence the weird back-and-forth dances and plenty of displays of aggression that we’ve seen over the past couple of months. So Ed Balls in January suggested Nick Clegg’s head would not be the price of a Coalition after all with the Lib Dems and was immediately slapped down by Clegg. Then this week Clegg softened his language on Labour, telling Steve Richards on Radio 4 that Ed Miliband’s party had ‘changed’. That wasn’t just slapped down by Miliband but was also followed by a story in