Chris Huhne pitches to the left

We’re used to AV platform-sharing by now — so it’s not the fact that Chris Huhne has written an article for the Observer alongside Labour’s John Denhan and the Green’s Caroline Lucas that shocks. It’s the words he then puts his name to. “Britain consistently votes as a centre-left country and yet the the Conservatives have dominated our politics for two-thirds of the time since 1900,” begins the article. “No wonder David Cameron says the current system ‘has served us well’,” it continues.

Although subsequent paragraphs are more conciliatory — claiming, for instance, that Tory voters in the north also suffer thanks to our electoral calculus — this is nonetheless a provocation to rile Huhne’s coalition colleagues. There’s an unforgiving subtext to the claim that “Yes to Fairer Votes is backed by progressives across the country” (which is: the Tories aren’t very nice). And it’s clarified by the article’s final observation that, if Britain votes Yes, then “the progressive majority will be one step closer to reality.” Who else talks about forging a “progressive majority”? Oh yes, Ed Miliband. And Vince Cable.

The arguments that Huhne has signed up to are dubitable, at best. There are few more, ahem, “progressive” policies in current British politics than the Tories’ welfare and education reforms — and yet that doesn’t allow them entry into Huhne and Cable’s merry club. And as for the idea that Britain is a centre-left country, Tim Montgomerie offers some worthwhile counterpoints here — although suffice to say it rather reduces party politics to a wishy-washy commonality that might not exist.

But the substance of the arguments pales besides their very existence. The ties that bind the coalition have frayed and weakened thanks to this referendum. As Chris Huhne picks at them further, it is hard not to see leadership ambitions writ in his actions.