Let's be honest, it does feel strange to wake up this morning with a Conservative Government in coalition with Liberal Democrats. I've never voted Conservative and I guess the same applies to many of our councillors, activists and supporters.
How did we get to this point?
British politics has changed. The old two party system is broken beyond repair, our society is now too subtle to allow everything to be seen as US - or THEM. This was how Margaret Thatcher saw Britain and I, among others, rejected this vision.
The consequence of this change is that we move into an era of coalitions and this has given our party some difficult choices.
Let's look at the problems thrown up by a possible coalition with Labour:
1. The two parties could not command a majority. They would need the support of nationalist parties who would be able to hold the coalition to ransom and ensure that their individual countries got the best of every deal. Nothing wrong with that from their point of view but it wouldn't make for a stable government.
2. The Prime Minister would have been an unknown quantity and we would have had a temporary leader over the next 8 weeks or so.
3. The Prime Minister would not have been tested by the debate process.
4. It would be a coalition between the two parties that lost seats in the election
5. Finally, and most important, Labour didn't want it. This became increasingly apparent as talks went on. There were various reasons for this but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that they know what is needed to heal our economy and would rather not be part of it.
That leaves us with the choice of staying on the sidelines, allowing the formation of a minority Conservative government, or a coalition.
We've chosen a coalition because this gives us the best chance of achieving a substantial part of our manifesto commitments - upon which our Liberal Democrat MP's were elected.
This is going to be the real test. Not how many MP's we have in government, but what we can achieve for the people of Britain. Details will emerge over the next few days and I would just ask everyone to focus on these rather than the personalities.
Lots of challenges and probably tears before bedtime, but it's difficult to see a better way forward.
