Be strong, Liberal Democrats — don’t form a coalition.

Be strong, Nick Clegg and the Lib­eral Demo­crats, and don’t get seduced into a coali­tion gov­ern­ment. A sop-seat in the Cab­inet isn’t worth it. You won’t get to for­ward your agenda. And the voters, next elec­tion, won’t for­give you. This has happened before, in 1979. It took the party a gen­er­a­tion to recover.

There is another way. Look to the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment for inspir­a­tion. Sup­port the issues, not the party. It doesn’t mat­ter to you which of the major parties is hold­ing the reigns of gov­ern­ment. You have pref­er­ences, sure, but those pref­er­ences surely must be sub­or­din­ate to exer­cising the man­date of the elect­or­ate. They didn’t vote for deals.

This route has other advant­ages. You’ll be in the media all the time, and we now know you can do well there. Without uncon­di­tional sup­port, the (admit­tedly remain­ing) excesses of either party’s polit­ical agenda won’t be able to be pushed by them. Your party’s opin­ion will count on every issue.

The last thing the UK needs right now is strong gov­ern­ment. Don’t get sucked into giv­ing us it.