One of the obsessions that will only get worse over the next few months – along with checking every poll that comes out every day to see whether you’re six points up, four points behind, or level-pegging – is what ‘red lines’ the parties will set out for their Coalition negotiations. David Cameron has made his EU referendum one, and it turns out that this isn’t as much of a problem for the Lib Dems as all their huffing and puffing on the subject would have you believe. Nick Clegg has been setting more red lines because he is the leader of the party that wants to talk about coalitions, as opposed to the two main parties that would still like to talk about majority governments, however implausible that may now seem.
Most of Clegg’s ‘red lines’ haven’t exactly been terrifying barriers for any party who might go into coalition with them: better treatment for mental health conditions, for instance, is pretty hard to say ‘no’ to.
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