The quid pro quo for Tories accepting the AV system is to wrap it up with a package which will cut the number of Parliamentary constituencies. Nick Clegg was full of wind and self-righteousnes when he commended it to the Commons yesterday.

Next year's referendum on the alternative vote is meant to be the pivot on which the coalition government will swivel. The thinking runs that if the Liberals lose then they have no reason to continue their cohabitation with the Tories and Labour is back in the game. I doubt this and suspect that if public spending cuts push us back into recession, mass unemployment and penury will bring Labour back. ( And conversely, if the Conservatives and Liberals manage to build a prosperous society, then their future is assured.)

The polls for the Sunday Times and Telegraph have the Lib Dems on 16 per cent and Labour and the Tories well up on the election. Meanwhile, over at the Observer we have a poll  showing that leftish Lib Dem voters are ready to defect to Labour.

    Who cares when there may not be an election for five years, and every sensible person is checking their beer and wine supplies and preparing for the England game rather than thinking about politics?

In last Sunday's Observer  I looked at the collapse in standards in British TV drama. Why it is that a generation ago, intelligent Americans desperate for grown-up entertainment would turn to British series on Masterpiece Theatre,and now their British counterparts watch American shows? My explanation was that British television executives did not see themselves as failures. On the contrary, and from their point of view quite fairly, they boasted that they were still worldbeaters at producing successful formulas. Unfortunately their formulaic successes were downmarket quiz shows and talent competitions.

   The great Bryan Appleyard, surely the most underrated journalist in Britain, has picked up on this Guardian survey of leading Labour thinkers. "Whither the left?" it cried. And the answers were a tad bathetic.