Are the Tories the natural party of Coalition?

Unless something earth shattering happens in the next week or so, the UK is on heading for a Parliament where no one party has overall control and while that prospect is exciting some and is good for democracy there are some who would prefer a clear cut result, not least the Conservative Party.

But if you look back coalition in the UK was a far more frequent occurrence and the Tories were willing to offer big concessions, over at the Next Left Blog it states ‘Strikingly, the Conservatives were frequently willing to offer the Premiership to a smaller partner, an offer turned down by Hartington in 1886 (with his Liberal colleague Goschen taking the Treasury a few months later) but accepted by the Liberal Lloyd George in 1918 and of course Labour's leader Ramsay MacDonald in 1931, as part of an attempt to project the idea that these coalitions were not simply Tory fronts.

Most in today's Conservative party seem unaware of the depth of their pro-coalition history.

Why? Because history begins in 1979. For the ideologised post-Thatcher party, coalition is indeed anathema, as it never was for Disraeli. The post-Thatcher Tory party remains cut off from the party's historical, political and intellectual traditions by the enduring impact of Keith Joseph's famous declaration of 1975 that the history of actually existing British post-war Conservatism has been a betrayal - and "not Conservative at all".

Power-sharing, negotiation, compromise - the very stuff of politics - and any attempt at pluralist political reform are viewed primarily as attempts to shut the Tories out. Yet a deeper progressive Conservativism might have learnt from their history, rather than apparently being cut off from it. It would not see all political negotiation as an offence against strong government, and so would see in the increased pluralism of a post-devolution, multi-party politics enormous opportunities for a supple, pragmatic Tory statecraft. It would probably be preparing to compete and deal on electoral reform, rather than implying it would cling to the wreckage of first-past-the-post even if it blew itself up by providing a bizarre result with little democratic credibility at all. Indeed, it might particularly favour the Alternative Vote at least, for it would finally lock in Cameronism, just as the early '70s Tories were the party of devolution and more interested than Labour in electoral reform.'

I wonder what will be on offer to potential suitors if the Conservatives emerge as the largest Party but without an overall majority this time around.Any source