Coalitions - the new kid on the block

Coalitions in UK politics are still new. Despite being rather normal in most of the Western world, it appears many even in the political media in London cannot even grasp what a coalition means.

Not enough is given to the electorate about coalitions in general. The problem is that coalitions are communicated often by political parties either justifying or condemning that particular agreement. Even within coalition partners, there is a sense of oneupmanship, either that the larger party has got the smaller to sell their soul or the smaller party has managed to steal a marcher on it's less cunning but larger party.

And to add to that confusion people wade in and make conflicting arguments depending on their viewpoint or the latest poll or whatever. So True Wales were telling all and sundry that Plaid Cymru had some cosmic spell over the three Unionist parties in February, but those very same Labour supporting True Wales heads will now tell you that Plaid were minor players in Labour's solid record of Government.

It will be interesting to see once we have a coalition between similar sized parties. At the moment there has been a larger party going into agreement with the smaller party. A changing dynamic will be two parties of relatively the same electoral support trying to get a programme of Government together.

Which does make my point for me - that coalitions are not mergers. Yes we can argue about whether an agreement is against party principles, selling out or even a massive bonus for each party; but ultimately they are agreements for a term of Government. This might well become a bit more solid now we will have fixed terms in all elections.

I have stayed away from individual parties and coalitions for good reason, because I have yet to see a foolproof way of measuring how much or how little a coalition has affected those parties fortunes. For instance, I would argue that policy wise that Plaid have came out of the One Wales coalition unscathed but also in relative credit. The referendum won is clearly the golden egg so to speak, but there is a solid list of achievements for both parties to point to.

However, many people will use the current polls and even more so the election results as proof as to how successful it was for Plaid. How much of that can we accurately say is proof of how One Wales affected Plaid's ratings?

The fact that we will never know should serve a purpose to any of us willing to rush to judge regardless of the results on May 6th.