Coalition? No thanks.

My party enter a coalition with the Tories? Surely not. In twelve months time, before the agony of a series of long and punishing strikes, before the accelerating unemployment hits a peak, and before the devasting verdict of the currency markets on the pound, the PM (David Cameron) will call an election. The Labour party - still deeply divided after a humiliating election defeat and wholesale defections after the 'election' of David Miliband as leader - will be bereft of money, fight and ideas. The Lib Dems will be short of cash, implicated in the decimation (if not the outright destruction) of public services and jaded from trying to spread a small team across Whitehall departments. Cameron will call an election (without PR) on Edward Heath grounds ('Who runs Britain') and wins. We'll be fewer in numbers, have less resources and marginalised at the end of it - and forever association with the most severe contraction in the public sector and the most draconian hike in taxation in living memory.

Nick, offer a fixed term (one year) supply and confidence arrangement. In exchange for that we want, in this order, a bill passed for fixed term parliaments immediately, a bill passed for the reform of the House of Lords to a fully elected chamber by 2012, a series of measures to 'clean up politics' to be jointly sponsored in the House. In addition, and after that, we want a commission on PR to establish the methodology for PR from the next - now fixed date - election; this is not an enquiry into the merits of PR, but a commission to establish how it will work and implement it. Nothing less will do.