Lord David Alton, former Liberal/Lib-Dem MP for Liverpool Edge Hill, later Mossley Hill, is concerned about our coalition government

Although I have sat for the past 13 years as an Independent null, I was once Liberal Chief Whip in the Commons and, in February 1974, as a 23-year-old, contested my first General Election. It was the last contest which led to a hung Parliament.

I have several other reasons for following the unfolding events at Westminster with interest.

As a teenage Liberal activist I became convinced of the merits of the single transferable vote; as a City Councillor, during my time as Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council, I had to make a minority administration function; during 18 years as an MP for a Liverpool constituency I came to value the constituency link between an MP and their constituents; and in the Lords opposed the decision of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties to introduce the closed party list system for European elections.

I have always seen merit in trying to find common ground where possible, and served as an MP during the period of the Liberal-SDP Alliance (which polled 25% in the 1983 general Election), but strongly opposed David Steel’s decision to take the Liberal Party into the Lib-Lab Pact of March 1977 – July 1978 – which seemed to be based on political calculation rather than principle. It is still difficult to recall anything that it actually achieved other than putting off the date of a General Election.

What bearing does any of this have on the formation, today, of a coalition government in Britain?

First, the unedifying procrastination of the past few days has risked discrediting the concept of power-sharing. The haggling vividly underlines the importance of going into an election with a clear idea of who will work with whom and on what basis.

Much of the electorate who took part in last week’s election will have been left with a bad taste in their mouths – and whatever the merits of today’s agreement it will not have been what millions of people thought that they were voting for last week.

In that election David Cameron’s Conservative Party won the largest share of the vote; he won the largest number of seats; and won many of the arguments. Throughout, he argued for a majoritarian outcome. So did Gordon Brown. By contrast, Nick Clegg argued for a hung parliament and inevitably led the electorate on a merry dance.

It is absolutely clear that morally and constitutionally David Cameron had the right to form a Government and despite the massive economic problems facing Britain he is right to want to grapple with them. Listening to politicians saying they would rather leave it to someone else rather than risk being blamed or tarnished for taking tough decisions reveals quite a lot about their reasons for being in political life. David Cameron may fail – I hope he doesn’t – but at least he has the political courage to try.

Nick Clegg, however, has conveyed the impression or wanting to run with the hares and the hounds – and this has left many voters confused. He has some way to go to convince that the Lib-Con deal is anything but a marriage of convenience.

Clegg is a fluent Dutch speaker and has Dutch antecedents. He will be familiar with the concept of a Dutch Auction, named after its use in the seventeenth-century Dutch Tulip Craze. The Dutch Auction is often regarded as the first speculative bubble, with tulips selling at ten times the annual income of a Dutch craftsman – and is a phrase which describes a rather tacky process in which an asset price deviates significantly from intrinsic value. In a Dutch Auction the auctioneer begins with a high asking price until one of the participants is willing to accept the auctioneer’s price – or a predetermined reserve price – that is, the minimum price acceptable to the salesman – has been reached.

When you have just lost seats and many of your policies enjoy no popular mandate – from support to the Euro to the illiberal imposition of party policy on what were conscience questions, such as abortion – you should show a modicum of humility. Dutch Auctions and double-dealing are a rum way to run a country.

The former Home Secretary, and Clegg’s fellow Sheffield MP, David Blunkett, described the process rather less prosaically, by liking the Liberal Democrats to harlots selling themselves to the highest bidder.

Voters who voted Lib Dem to keep the Conservatives out will feel betrayed as will those who believed their votes would lead to the Lib-Lab Progressive Politics favoured by The Guardian and The Independent leader writers. Failure during the election campaign to lay before the electorate what would be the terms of a Liberal-Conservative or Lib-Lab Coalition left the electorate voting for a question mark. Nick Clegg’s lack of clarity during the campaign also led to a leaching away of votes and has led to a process which appears to have put party advantage to the fore.

Philosophically and ideologically the Lib Dems – since their merger with former Labour Party members – have largely abandoned classical Liberalism and opted for a social democratic paradigm of society. Many have hankered after a Lib-Lab realignment; and, in their London salons have plotted the creation of a voting system – based on the alternative vote (not single transferable votes or proportionality) which would cast such realignment into stone. Indeed, some have spent their whole political lives devoted to such a project.

The prospect of a Liberal-Conservative axis genuinely never occurred to most of them, which is why it will lead to internal dissent, rupture and resignations. David Cameron has described himself as "a liberal Conservative" and those of us who have always had some sympathy with the one-nation tradition of Conservatism have warmed to his approach – but my erstwhile colleagues in the Liberal Democrats have not been among those to share that enthusiasm.

If the two parties are philosophically unlikely stable mates, the precedents do not auger particularly well either.

In the 1920s disagreements over coalition parties catastrophically ruptured the old Liberal Party.

I remember veterans of those years describing to me how coalition Ministers were shouted down at the party’s National Executive Committee – accused of being traitors. Separate parties and organisations were established. And by the 1930s there were Samuelite Liberals (supporters of Herbert Samuel and representing Asquith’s political heirs), Independent Liberals (mainly Lloyd George’s relatives) and Simonites – National Liberals, supporters of Sir John Simon who worked in coalitions with Ramsay Macdonald’s National Government and the Conservatives, becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer – and close ally of the author of appeasement, Neville Chamberlain. The National Liberals were formally absorbed into the Conservative Party in 1968 but National Liberals continued to sit in the Commons, taking the Conservative whip, until 1983. Michael Heseltine’s first electoral contest was under the Conservative and National Liberal label.

In 1931 – after 25 years as a Liberal MP – Sir John Simon had refused to support Lloyd George’s Lib-Lab pact and crossed the floor to form the National Liberals. Commenting on Simon’s memoirs (Retrospect, published in 1952) Roy Jenkins described them as "barren and bloodless" and said they "were of interest primarily because they exposed his fatal capacity to turn even his substantial if partial triumphs into antic-climatic ashes." The journalist, George Edinger, said of Simon, "Often he would touch with his finger-tips the ivory gates and the golden – and he never got inside." This is not entirely true as he held most high political offices – Home Secretary, Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Lord Chancellor. But, simply gaining a seat at the Cabinet table does not necessarily imply political success or achievement – especially if your advancement breaks your party.