Bernard Ingham: This odd alliance should not work, but it may just manage to beat the odds

WHEN Gordon Brown finally ousted Tony Blair as Prime Minister, I immediately wrote him off. Many people thought I was being unfair and should give him a chance. No, I said, he's had 10 years as Chancellor to show what he is made of. He will either be a roaring success or an abject failure, and I think I know which. And so it came to pass.

I would be tempted similarly to dismiss our curious, not to say eccentric, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition but for one thing: it has no track record.

We have not the slightest idea how David Cameron will perform as Prime Minister or how constructive a partner Nick Clegg will be as his

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deputy. The early signs are encouraging in terms of decisiveness and good will but all kinds of things could go wrong and they don't have much experience around them.

Only two members of the Cabinet – William Hague and Kenneth Clarke – have previous Cabinet experience and only four others – Liam Fox, Andrew Mitchell, Cheryl Gillan and Lord Strathclyde – have served as junior Ministers.

This is an improvement on Blair's first administration when only six members had previously heard a civil servant say "Yes Minister". But it is still not a lot to go on.

It is stretching credibility to believe that Cameron and Clegg can productively co-exist in a five-year Parliament when one is a Eurosceptic and the other a raging Europhile; when one believes in capping immigration and the other encouraging it; and when one would keep Trident and the other get rid of it.

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Then there is the case of Chris Huhne, the emerald green Liberal Democrat chosen to head the Department of Energy and Climate Change. His job, above all others, is to keep the lights on, but he has an aversion to nuclear power. Yet the Conservatives – in fact the Government – are formally pro-nuclear.

Here our so-called "new politics" has ingeniously come up with a wheeze to allow Huhne – indeed all Lib Dems – to speak against nuclear power but not to vote against it in the Commons. This brings a whole new dimension to collective responsibility

Our new Government is God's gift to political cartoonists and comics. It offers as many hilarious possibilities as the difficulties it faces.

And no government since 1951 has been confronted from the outset with such a comprehensive portfolio of severe financial, economic and social problems. Incidentally, Labour should be given an ASBO banning it from office for a generation for its "scorched earth" legacy.

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But this is why, in spite of the coalition's inexperience, policy divisions and different outlooks, I hesitate to forecast its early demise, even though an opinion poll at the weekend found nearly half gave it a year at best, and three-quarters thought it would do well to

last two.

There are certain elements glueing it together. The voters will deal harshly with any party thought to be putting political advantage before national interest when the country is deeply in hock. Liberal Democrats are embedded in sticky governmental areas – public expenditure, business and banking and energy.

And in spite of perhaps inevitable unpopularity over the Government's measures, Lib Dems may still come to enjoy their first run in

government in a lifetime. Power is addictive as well as an aphrodisiac.

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In the end what will determine the coalition's fate is whether it can persevere to bring some much-needed common sense to the conduct of our affairs and be perceived to be progressively restoring solvency and improving the quality of life.

We should not rule out success. Instead, we should consider the possible consequences of it. If, God forbid, we got proportional representation then anything could happen.

But if a referendum turned it down, could the Lib Dems stomach it? If not, would they then be prepared to walk out on Cameron's one-nation Tories into possible oblivion?

If they stayed put, would there then be a splintering on the Left with Labour moderates – in most cases, well to the right of Lib Dem grassroots activists – rallying to the ConDems they have hitherto despised? And would the Conservative right-wing re-align itself with Ukip as, it would hope, a sort of grit in the oyster?

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In 2007 Gordon Brown was dead easy to read compared with our amazing

and faintly ridiculous new coalition.

All my antennae, instincts and experience tell me to give it the thumbs down. But some still small voice says hold on. Unprecedented debts have brought unprecedented possibilities.