Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tolhurst.

With this month marking 15 years since the signing of the historic Conservative Liberal Democrat

Coalition Agreement and 10 years since its dissolution, today we're looking at what the

fractured five-party politics of 2025 can learn from five chaotic days in

2010 that led to five years of surprisingly stable government. To discuss how it all came together

and what stopped it from falling apart, and to like to be joined by one of the people who helped

negotiate the historic deal between the Tories and the Lib Dems, along with two members of the House of

Lords who in their past lives were at the

heart of that 2010-2015 government, as well as a professor who quite literally wrote the book on

the coalition. David Laws was a Lib Dem MP for Joville from 2001 to 2015, and was part of his party's

team that thrashed out an agreement after the general election gave no party majority to govern,

and after a brief spell as Chief Secretary to the Treasury,

returned to government as an education minister.

Baroness Kate Fall began working with David Cameron after he became leader,

and when he entered Downing Street, she worked as Deputy Chief of Staff inside No. 10.

Lord Johnny Oates, a Lib Dem Pier, was Chief of Staff to Nick Clegg during his time as Deputy Prime Minister,

and finally Robert Hazel, Professor of Government at the Constitution at University College London,

and the co-author of the book The Politics of the Coalition, joins us too.

So, Robert, I'm going to start with you. Can you just talk us through the kind of the backdrop to the 2010 election? The two big issues in politics as we look back are probably the expenses scandal and the financial crash. Was that also kind of what the atmosphere was like in the run-up to that election? Yes, the atmosphere was very feebrow in the run-up to the 2010 election. It had looked until only three or four

months before the election, as though we were going to have another single-party government.

And the polls changed. I remember it vividly in December of 2009, when, as it happened, we brought out a report on a hung parliament and lessons for Westminsterstone

Whitehall. And when the report went to press, I remember telling my researchers, don't be too

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