The great Lib-Lab coalition that never was

Returning from one of his clandestine meetings with Tony Blair in early 1997, Paddy Ashdown noted in his diary: "I left feeling betrayed. He knows perfectly well what we agreed before this whole process started and he has not delivered."

Returning from one of his clandestine meetings with Tony Blair in early 1997, Paddy Ashdown noted in his diary: "I left feeling betrayed. He knows perfectly well what we agreed before this whole process started and he has not delivered."

It was a feeling shared by those around him, who wondered whether he was risking too much political capital on his relationship with the Labour leader. As Ashdown's close friend and courtier Lord (Richard) Holme warned him: "You must not get carried way with the film script that you have written in your head - two strong people standing up and shaping history. It must be practical." If Holme had his doubts, then Paddy really was in this jungle on his own.

In truth, moments of suspicion on Ashdown's part were rare. For most of the period covered in these diaries (and beyond), Ashdown chose to trust Blair, sometimes, it must be surmised, against his own better judgement. In September 1994, Ashdown notices that Blair won't look him in the eye, but gives him the benefit of the doubt, "as if his mind works better without eye contact. But it's not offensive, nor does it appear that he is avoiding you. The impression given is one of thoughtfulness".

Of course, no one knows what thoughts were churning around in Blair's mind during these sessions, probably not even Blair himself. Ashdown is not the last to find negotiating with Blair akin to trying to pick up mercury with a fork, as Lloyd George famously said of Eamon de Valera. Nor can Ashdown be faulted for trying to win Blair round to a more "pluralist" politics. He was right to identify him as a man with whom he should try to do business, and whose potent appeal was as much an opportunity as a threat for the Lib Dems.

Had the Blair-Ashdown alliance been consummated, it would have meant a realignment of politics, with a Lib-Lab government committed to radical constitutional reform, including proportional representation, Britain in the euro, and Ashdown and Menzies Campbell in the Cabinet, guardians of the liberal conscience. If all that wasn't expansive enough, there was the prospect of the "Progressive 21st Century". No wonder Ashdown thought it was "a prize so huge it must be worth the attempt".

The attempt failed. But the tragedy - or at least paradox - of the story is not that Ashdown tried too hard to do his deal with Blair, or even that he was defeated by "the forces of tribalism", but that he held out as a matter of principle for proportional representation. This was an honourable stance, and one that saved his party from a grievous split, but it also meant that the "project" could not be completed.

Mercurial as he was, Blair did signal quite clearly on five separate occasions the less satisfactory "alternative vote" system as a possible basis of a deal. Revealingly, Blair resisted Ashdown's case for full PR not on its merits, but because of how it would play in the media: "My main reason for not wanting PR is because I understand the power of Murdoch and Black. At present they are prepared to let me have a go while the Tories sort themselves out. But they will change to opposition if they believe I will keep them out for ever."

Many readers will turn to these diaries for these glimpses of the private Blair. But they are no less fascinating for the story they tell of how Ashdown took a near-bankrupt rabble to the brink of national power. Not to mention such exotica as a Tory defector code-named "Wolseley", our hero traversing Bosnia in a Renault 5, and the revelation that Fergie was a Lib Dem.

Ashdown's opinion of his successor Charles Kennedy is tactfully omitted but, laid back though Mr Kennedy may be, it could well be he who seizes the pragmatic deal with Blair that, perhaps, was on the table all along. For all we know, Tony may even now be discussing "the project" with Charlie at No 10 over chops in breadcrumbs and some Mâcon Villages. I wonder if Mr Kennedy keeps a diary?