Einstein once remarked that if you keep on bisecting the distance between mouse and hole, the only one who’s going to get anywhere is the cat. Every day the LibCon talks ‘inch forward’ – but the sticking points remain the same: proportional representation, and (among the Duncan-Smith tendency) doing a deal with the LibDems at all. Meanwhile, in the background, Mandy the pussy-cat sits poised to pounce.

There is a certain predictability about what’s going on now. In June last year, the Slog’s mother site nby posted a piece arguing for a LibCon coalition. In it, I showed the level of support for the idea among voters – and the level of intense opposition among the diehards. It seems to me this is why we are inching forward to nowhere as yet: neither side can sell the deal to their activists and believers.

We are back at the problem that has been screwing Britain for the last twenty years: what Peter Oborne calls The Political Class isn’t just out of touch at the top – they care and worry about things of no relevance to real people all the way down to the pamphlet distributors at the bottom.

I have been fascinated by the political process for over fifty years, but I would no more become a Party activist than start conversations over supper about the new road works on the B5624. Have any of you ever been to one of their meetings? These people truly are on a different planet – in a solar system far, far away.

LibDem and Green meetings are the worst, because apart from the tedious rants about how much they hate every other Party, aims and objectives are outlined in the manner of ants plotting to push over the Boulder Dam. Tory meetings are very formal and laced with casual remarks of an appallingly undemocratic and anti-libertarian nature. Labour sessions are always dominated by the far Left, rebranded these days as feminists and anti-fascists. They too blithely suggest policy aims that would render Britain a living museum of the USSR.

As we saw during the election, almost all people like a bit of novelty and a pretty face. They don’t give a monkey’s chuff about voting reform or paying off the deficit: they want job security, safe streets, no immigration, dead bankers and stable government.They’d prefer to have honest politicians, but know this is as likely as a gefillte fish hypermarket in Teheran.

For those of us who don’t want to be activists but are awake, the aims go slightly further – but are not dissimilar. We want rid of the whole New Labour cabal of crooks, cheats and liars. (Don’t forget, well over 50% of the electorate voted against them: that’s the real majority). We want Britain’s finances to be put in order. And we’d like someone to get on the case of rebuilding our absent economy, rather than blokes with caterpillar eyebrows talking about recoveries.

We are in real and present danger here of a tiny minority of obsessives standing in the way of a deal that (whether they realise it or not) is by far the best option for Britain right now. But don’t take my word for it: look at those who are against it.