The Lib Dems have been thoroughly ineffectual in the coalition. So much so that some of us — including Hugo Rifkind in this magazine — have asked why they bother to turn up for work. I wonder whether the Lib Dems press on with the coalition because they can’t face admitting to its failure. They are no better than an unhappy housewife, clinging to a loveless marriage because she believes she is happier trapped in a wretched partnership than on her own.
If this is the case, then Nick Clegg would do well to read Elizabeth Jenkins’s 1954 novel The Tortoise and the Hare. Achingly sad, but ultimately uplifting, this elegant book captures every minute detail of a brutally failing marriage.
Naive young Imogen is married to Evelyn, a domineering bully of a barrister. He speaks to her with a ‘faint, unconscious note of contempt’ in his voice that makes her ‘long wildly not only to be dead, but never to have been born’.
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