Greg Mulholland: Coalition is no sell-out by the Lib Dems

I knew it was going to be an interesting week when Leeds Rhinos tweeted me to point out that the new Government could be a Rhinos blue and

amber coloured. So it turned out.

This week the Liberal Democrat party, as a whole, backed the agreement made by the leadership to enter into a coalition government with the Conservatives.

We have a new Government and even more importantly, we have a new kind of Government, a new kind of politics, where politicians with different points of view find a way to work together for the sake of the country.

This was a very difficult decision for my Liberal Democrat colleagues, and for me. What we needed was both a stable and a reforming Government to get the country out of the mess that it finds itself in – a mess

that seems to be even worse than people had thought.

This is a situation where we have put the needs of the country ahead of self-interest or electoral gain. It has been a very tough decision and whether people agree with it or not, it has taken real courage.

Whatever criticisms people have of this decision, it was certainly no sell-out. Not to have made it would have been a cop out.

The Liberal Democrat MPs agreed from the outset that doing nothing was not an option. As a party, we have long argued for co-operation between the parties.

During the election campaign, Nick Clegg made it clear that he would start by talking to the party with the most votes and most seats – he stuck by his word.

The Liberal Democrats did not "choose" the Conservatives over Labour. There is some disquiet among Left leaning commentators that we should have put together a "rainbow coalition" just to "keep the Tories out".

The truth is that this just didn't add up. No government that relied on an unreliable ragbag of at least seven parties could be certain to have

lasted more than a few months. It would not have been a legitimate government or a democratic one, with yet another unelected Prime Minister.

The overwhelming view of people I met during the campaign was that Labour had to go. So any attempt to establish this kind of coalition would have been an affront to democracy. There would have been uproar in the country and the British people would rightly not have stood for it.

I could see the appeal of a truly progressive coalition with the 1996 Labour Party to change politics for good and to give us a freer and fairer society.

However, 13 years later, this discredited Labour government had not changed politics for good. It did not leave us a freer or a fairer society. They ran out of ideas and credibility and any attempt to prop them up would have been truly disastrous for a party that claims to be both Liberal and Democratic.

Some people are saying, "I didn't vote for this". Yes, there are many different reasons people vote, whether for a candidate, for a set of policies or because they like the look of a leader.

However, for most of those who voted Liberal Democrat, they were saying that they wanted to see Liberal Democrats in government implementing Liberal Democrat policies. That is what they have got.

We can now achieve our four pledges – fairer taxes; a fair start in

life for every child; a new approach to our discredited banking system and the prospect of green and sustainable economic growth; and a new,

open politics which you can trust once again.

ID cards will go. We will introduce our pupil premium to give poorer children a better chance at school. There will be no third runway at Heathrow and no more fingerprinting our children in schools without parental permission. We will achieve a chunk of parliamentary reform and a referendum on the Alternative Vote, a big step towards a fairer voting system.

There is also an opportunity for the new Parliament to give a stronger voice for Yorkshire. The outgoing Labour government has shown a clear bias in favour of the South-East and the North-West.

We must try to change that. Realistically, there will be no new money for the next few years, but we must try to get a fairer share of the limited investment to come.

I'm reminded of the words David Steel said to the Liberal Assembly in 1980: "I am not at all interested in power without principle, but I am only very slightly interested in principle without power."

A Liberal Party is in government for the first time since 1945. It is

now up to all of us, blue and amber, to make it work, not for the benefit of two very different parties, but for the country.

Greg Mulholland is the Liberal Democrat MP for Leeds North West.