After the internet the second most reliable source of information and sensible opinions is what someone tells you in a pub.

Here’s a thesis that was put to me by someone who takes the long view of politics. He prefers to look at things through the prism of social forces coming into action rather than organisational chicanery, though he’s had some experience of that too.

The social basis of the Con Dem government is very narrow and likely to get more so. The rumpus over child benefit showed how unpopular even its first tentative steps at smashing the welfare state will be. To this we can add that the developing row over university tuition will dwarf that. Millions of school age children and their families are looking at decades of crippling debt in a world where they probably won’t be able to buy a house till they’re fifty. Anyone hoping that their kids will be a financial lifeline in their twilight years may be facing disappointment.

Anyway, on with the thesis. We are looking at a sustained period of sharp class conflict. The Lib Dems’ electoral base will desert it in big numbers and lots of the people who voted Tory to get rid of Gordon Brown will have the scales fall from their eyes. In such a situation the coalition will become very fragile and there is a strong possibility that it will fall. However the attack on the post 1945 settlement is the strategic choice of an important section of the British ruling class and they will want to push ahead with it. So what’s the next best thing to a majority Tory government for doing that?

That’s right, a “government of all the talents” or a “national unity government”. Now we can quibble over whether or not Alistair Darling, Tony Blair and David Miliband meet our definition of talented. Other adjectives are more commonly used yet their programme wasn’t substantially different from that being proposed by Clegg and Cameron. The difference was as much one of timing rather than outcome and, as the Tories never tire of pointing, out they are picking up New Labour’s baton in all sorts of areas.

Naturally this will have an impact inside the Labour Party if its right wing jumps ship. As the leadership election results showed by voting for David Miliband much, though by no means all, of the party’s membership is ideologically Blairite. This is not necessarily the same thing as being hard core Labour in the way that, for example Roy Hattersley is. These people might not have the same organisational loyalty.

The other option is that Ed Miliband might be tempted by the very same prospect in which case the rift inside the party might turn out to be much deeper.

For what it’s worth my own view is that it would be a very fine thing if the Labour Party were to be broken apart and working class politics in Britain reshaped in the upcoming wave of struggle. It’s not likely to happen anytime soon. For a start there is nothing that represents even the nucleus of a credible alternative. In any case all the previous attempts to create something else failed to gain much in the way of meaningful union backing, to put it charitably.

It was a nice idea to kick around but probably not a goer in the next five years.