He had also been careful to avoid any suggestion that the first attempt at forming a government was bound to be successful. At the same time he knew that momentum plays a big part in uncertain political situations. On the Friday morning he was determined to stick to his word and give the early cards to the Conservatives. At this point he had the full support of his influential mentor, Paddy Ashdown. Both agreed that the parliamentary arithmetic compelled them to let the Conservatives move first. Ashdown also agreed with Clegg on the Friday morning that whatever else had happened, Labour had lost the election, and that the Liberal Democrats’ bargaining position was not as strong as they had hoped it would be. At this stage it had not crossed Ashdown’s mind that a coalition with Labour was feasible. Instead he was privately briefing journalists that the only options were a minority Conservative government or a Con/Lib arrangement.

With Brown still asleep in Number Ten, Clegg headed for his party’s headquarters in Westminster. He made a short statement confirming his view that the Conservatives should be given the first chance to form a government. Clegg delivered the words without having any idea how David Cameron would respond. He was sticking with what he believed to be his only legitimate response to an election that the Conservatives had almost won. His more ideologically inclined predecessors would almost certainly have been less accommodating to the Conservatives, but Clegg was the party’s first leader to be genuinely equidistant between the two other parties and in some respects closer to the Conservatives.

Soon after Brown emerged after a few hours’ sleep, Mandelson briefed him on what Clegg had said. Both agreed that they still had cards to play. Labour had fought the election pledged to hold a referendum on electoral reform and to campaign in favour of a Yes vote. The Conservatives were opposed to electoral reform and were not at this point offering a referendum. Brown was especially resolute, more so than Mandelson. ‘Clegg’s party won’t accept a deal with the Tories,’ he repeated several times. They agreed Brown must make a statement, but one that was restrained. Mandelson told him: ‘You must make clear that Cameron has every right to speak with Clegg first … appear gracious and prime-ministerial …’

Brown’s subsequent intervention was perfectly pitched, making it clear that he was not deserting the stage but nor was he seeking to block others from taking over. In truth he had no power to block anyone, but Brown was almost enjoying a final challenge in which for him the stakes were not as high as they were for Cameron and Clegg. Either he would soon be released from the burden of power, or he would be the author of a breakthrough, a partnership between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. He would be making history once more.

The sweeping statement made outside Number Ten on Friday morning incorporated both scenarios:

With the outcome of the general election, we find ourselves in a position unknown to this generation of political leaders with no single party able to have a Commons majority and therefore have a majority government … I therefore felt that I should give you, and through you the country, my assessment of where we are. I do so as Prime Minister with a constitutional duty to seek to resolve the situation for the good of the country, not as the leader of the Labour party less than a day after the election.

This was both true and disingenuous. Brown was still the Prime Minister until an alternative could assemble adequate parliamentary support. Parts of the media attacked Brown for staying in Number Ten with a brutality that suggested the election campaign was still taking place, unable to stop kicking their victim even when there was no point in doing so. Brown had no choice but to stay put until the chaos of the election result had been resolved. But at the same time he was acting with the interests of the Labour party in mind, at least what he regarded as the party’s interests.

First, it is well understood that we face immediate economic challenges that must be met. A meeting of the Euro Group is being held tonight to discuss Greece and other issues. On the critical question on the formation of a government that can command a parliamentary majority, I have of course seen the statements of other party leaders. I understand and completely respect the position of Mr Clegg in stating that he wishes first to make contact with the leader of the Conservative party … For my part I should make clear that I would be willing to see any of the party leaders, clearly should the discussions between Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg come to nothing, then I will of course be prepared to discuss with Mr Clegg the areas where there may be some measure of agreement between our two parties.

The statement cleverly conveyed a sense of business as usual, challenging the media and the voters to accept that Brown could still rule. More specifically he reminded Clegg and his party where they shared common ground.

Brown was almost exhilarated. On the Friday after the election no leader exerted full control. But he was more in control than he had been during what for him had been a wretchedly bleak campaign.

Brown had in common with Blair a capacity to focus on changing events with a forensic ruthlessness and sense of purpose. His first phone call on the Friday morning was to summon his Transport Secretary, Andrew Adonis, to Number Ten. Lord Adonis had been a close ally of Tony Blair’s, and before that crucially he had been an active supporter of the SDP/Liberal alliance. He knew the Liberal Democrats better than anyone else in the cabinet. In yet another ironic twist Brown turned to Adonis, a figure he once viewed with suspicious hostility, in order to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, a concept he had viewed with horror while Blair was leader.

But on the Friday morning he was deadly serious, pulling prime-ministerial strings. The invitation to Adonis was testimony to his seriousness. He was working with Mandelson and Adonis, two figures who enthused about realignment on the centre left during the period that Brown was against any such transformation of the landscape, partly because he was not in charge to do the transforming.

For the first half of the election Brown had toured the country, captured on camera once or twice a day at a supermarket or at a school. In these bland locations he repeated the same message that ‘he was looking forward to debating substance and not style’. That was more or less it. Mandelson had controlled the campaign in London, holding press conferences with vivacious, combative wit. Brown had been reduced to the role of King Lear, travelling from place to place with his entourage, stripped of real power within his party and beyond while those wild allies he had trusted and admired for their strategic insights were banished from the centre. Brown’s wily old press secretary, Charlie Whelan, was explicitly told by Mandelson he would not be welcome at Labour’s headquarters in Westminster. One of Whelan’s successors, Damian McBride, was working for a school in north London, in political exile. Even Ed Balls had been reduced to a marginal role during the campaign. Each of them was bursting with ideas about how Labour could win and how Brown could be projected more effectively, but they were rarely heard since Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, also back at the heart of the operation, were not inclined to listen to any of them.

The Prime Minister’s futile tour and the absence of those who had served him with unswerving loyalty highlighted one of the great tragic ironies of Brown’s career. Brown had ached to replace Blair, but he proved far more powerful when he was Chancellor than as Prime Minister, and nowhere was his loss of authority more vividly exposed than during the campaign. In the 2001 and 2005 elections he and his entourage held absolute sway at the party’s headquarters, determining strategy and calling the tunes. During the unseasonably cold late spring of 2010 Mandelson pulled the levers in London as Brown toured pointlessly.

Now the election was over he was quite unexpectedly playing a familiar role, doing whatever it takes to stay in the game. By the early afternoon his space to manoeuvre became even more constrained. David Cameron issued his response to Clegg and Brown. His speech was a work of art, a collaborative act of political genius that had been carefully prepared in advance. From early spring Cameron had recognized that he might not win an overall majority, having been confident of doing so a few months earlier. During the Conservatives’ conference in the autumn Lord Ashcroft, the party’s controversial donor and strategist, had told him he would win an overall majority of seventy. Some of Cameron’s advisers thought the prediction was too pessimistic. But the Conservatives’ support had fallen after their policies came under fleeting scrutiny at the start of the year. More fundamentally Oliver Letwin, an influential ally who had regular access to Cameron, was convinced that politics had changed and no single party could expect to win substantial victories again. Even when polls were predicting a big Tory lead, Letwin expected a tiny majority or none at all.

Letwin and a few others around Cameron were surprisingly relaxed about a political situation in which the Liberal Democrats might be a permanent third force of some national significance. They were convinced that Clegg and several other senior Liberal Democrats were much closer to them than to Labour, particularly in their critical attitude towards the state. This was by no means a universally shared view in Cameron’s circle, and their pre-election objective had been to take as many seats as possible from Clegg’s party. Nonetheless a common theme in their political discussions was that the Liberal Democrats under Clegg were potential allies, and not at all a party of the centre left.

In the light of the inconclusive results, the conflicting motives of Cameron and his inner circle came together. Cameron and his shadow chancellor, George Osborne, were instinctively more tribal than Letwin, but they had watched in awe as Tony Blair had threatened to destroy their party for ever by forming a big tent that included an army of non-Labour supporters in informal alliance. They also recalled more vividly Brown’s fleetingly successful attempt to do the same when he became Prime Minister in 2007. A Tory MP defected to Labour and several non-Labour ministers joined the government. Brown had a soaring honeymoon as he strayed outside party boundaries. In spite of their massive majorities Blair and Brown cleared the path for the extraordinary events that followed the 2010 election, a politics of multi-layered calculation amidst proclamations of new and partially intended purity, the so-called new politics.

Whatever the definitions applied to their approach, Cameron and Osborne had chosen politics as their vocation in order to rule. They were fascinated by the choreography of politics, ways to win and the dark routes that led to defeat. On the whole they were perceptive readers of the rhythms. On this occasion they were titanic composers, recognizing an opportunity in their failure to win an overall majority. In his speech delivered early on Friday afternoon in Westminster, Cameron acknowledged that his party had fallen short of a majority and invited Clegg to form a coalition:

One option would be to give other parties reassurances about certain policy areas, and then seek their agreement to allow a minority Conservative government to continue in office without the country constantly facing the threat of its government falling. But there is a case for going further than an arrangement that simply keeps a minority Conservative government in office. So I want to make a big, open and comprehensive offer to the Liberal Democrats. I want us to work together in tackling our country’s big and urgent problems: the debt crisis; our deep social problems; and our broken political system.

At his first prime-ministerial press conference a few days later in the garden of Number Ten, held with Clegg standing beside him, Cameron gave the impression that it was only in their joint conversations that the two of them had agreed a coalition was the best option. It was clear, however, that this was what Cameron wanted the outcome to be before he had exchanged a single word with Clegg. The rest of his statement was a spectacular act of seduction in which he retained a strong grip on a potential coalition while appearing to let go, almost recklessly so:

Let me explain my thinking. First, it is right and reasonable to acknowledge of course that there are policy disagreements between us, many of which were highlighted in those television debates. To fellow Conservatives who have fought and campaigned and worked so hard to achieve the massive advance we have made in this campaign, I want to make it clear that I do not believe any government should give more powers to the European Union.

I do not believe that any government can be weak or soft on the issue of immigration which needs to be controlled properly. And the country’s defences must be kept strong. I also believe that on the basis of the election result we have achieved, it is reasonable to expect that the bulk of the policies in our manifesto should be implemented.

Cameron gave no ground on these three big themes and on one other, his belief that spending cuts should be implemented within weeks. But then he put into public form the thrust of private conversations that had reverberated around his office over recent years:

But across our two manifestos, there are many areas of common ground, and there are areas where I believe we in the Conservative Party can give ground, both in the national interest and in the interests of forging an open and trusting partnership.

We share a strong desire to make opportunity more equal in this country, and I recognize the high priority that the Liberal Democrats have given to the proposals for a pupil premium in our schools.

We agree with this idea, it is in our manifesto too, and I am sure we can develop a common approach that recognizes the urgency that the Liberal Democrats have attached to this proposal.

The Liberal Democrats in their manifesto have made the achievement of a low-carbon economy an absolute priority and we support this aim. I’m sure we can agree a common plan to achieve it.

The Liberal Democrats have also made proposals to reform our tax system. We both agree that Labour’s jobs tax, as the Liberal Democrats manifesto puts it, ‘is a damaging tax on jobs’, and we would seek to reverse it.

It has always been an aspiration for the Conservative Party to reduce taxes, especially on those who earn the least, and we are happy to give this aim a much higher priority, and to work together to determine how it can be afforded.

We share a common commitment to civil liberties and to getting rid, immediately, of Labour’s ID cards scheme. On our political system we agree with the Liberal Democrats that reform is urgently needed to help restore trust – and that reform must include the electoral system.

The statement out-Blaired Blair in evasive clarity. Cameron was being direct in arguing the patriotic case for stable government at a time of economic crisis. Genuinely he could see common ground with Clegg. And yet he did not concede much in spite of the magnificently generous tone. On Europe and cutting the deficit there were no concessions. In some other policy areas the two parties were already in agreement. At this stage Cameron hardly moved on electoral reform. One of his early objectives as leader had been to undermine the Liberal Democrats. Now he sought to embrace them, but in a way that might prove over time more lethal than his early attempts to stride on to their terrain.

The reaction to Cameron’s statement of the two other players in this dance could not have been more different. Brown watched in Number Ten feeling more combative than at any point during the campaign. When Cameron proposed a review on electoral reform Brown recognized at once the echoes from 1974, when Ted Heath offered Jeremy Thorpe a speaker’s conference on the issues after no party secured an overall majority. Thorpe rejected the meaningless concession. Brown exclaimed: ‘They can’t accept this … Cameron’s given nothing on electoral reform … He’s given them nothing at all.’

Brown was largely right, but with one massive qualification. Cameron was inviting the Lib Dems into government with an emphasis on their shared wariness of the state.

In striking contrast to Brown’s scepticism, Clegg was excited by Cameron’s offer. By then he had already in his own mind ruled out more or less the possibility of doing a deal with Labour, so the only options he perceived were a minority Conservative government or a more formal arrangement. Since becoming leader Clegg had deliberately kept his distance from Cameron and had no idea how to weigh up the motives behind the statement. Following Blair’s journey in opposition Cameron had sought to make overtures towards Clegg as Blair had done with Ashdown. Clegg had shown no interest. He was irritated by the media’s soft treatment of Cameron and jealous of the attention that he had attracted as leader of the opposition. The leader of the third party was also deeply suspicious of claims that Cameron had genuinely modernized his party. Nonetheless he had always found Cameron personable, whereas he could not bear dealing with Brown.

One exchange with Brown in particular had remained in Clegg’s mind. The two of them had been discussing a book and getting on reasonably well. Clegg then merged the friendly discussion into one about party politics. Brown changed within a nanosecond from the engaged, enthusiastic bibliophile to the rigidly controlled tribalist. Clegg felt it was like talking to a different person, and in some ways it was. Brown could become unnecessarily defensive when engaging with political opponents and switch personality accordingly. Clegg was so shocked that he was convinced, wrongly, that Brown would be incapable of making the leap to multi-party politics.

Shortly after making his statement Cameron spoke to Clegg on the phone and reiterated the degree to which the offer was sincerely made. They agreed that negotiations between the two sides should begin.

Clegg’s negotiating team signalled clearly which way he was heading. David Laws had been wooed several times by the Conservatives in the hope he would defect. Danny Alexander was in effect Clegg’s representative. Chris Huhne was part of the generation of Liberal Democrats that yearned for power, and had told friends before the campaign that it would be impossible for the Liberal Democrats to make a deal with Labour if the government had lost its overall majority. Although instinctively more of a social democrat than Laws and Clegg, he had made the leap towards working with the Conservatives before a single vote had been cast. He wanted power.

In Number Ten power was an issue too. Two forces came together on the Friday afternoon, a Blairite-Brownite assumption that Labour should do whatever it took to retain power and the ultra-Blairite hunger for realignment on the centre left. Brown, Balls, Ed Miliband, Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson had been conditioned to fight for power, having been removed from it for so long in the 1980s and 1990s. At the same time Adonis in particular had yearned for realignment on the centre left. All of them were dreaming with different reasons and varying degrees of enthusiasm of a Lib/Lab coalition. At one point over the weekend Mandelson joked that ‘Andrew has been waiting since 1906 for this moment to arrive.’ They were not giving up now. In spite of Brown’s public words earlier that he understood the right of Cameron and Clegg to seek agreement, Mandelson and Campbell urged Brown to speak to Clegg that evening in order to make clear that he was deadly serious about a Lib/Lab coalition.

Late on Friday afternoon Brown and Clegg spoke, each of them exhausted and instinctively wary of the other. Clegg did not welcome the call, regarding it as a diversion when the talks with the Conservatives had not properly begun. Brown’s people-management skills were dreadful even when he had enjoyed a good night’s sleep. Rarely in his career had he prevailed by intoxicating charm. His preferred approach was to put a relentless, unswerving case complete with warnings about the consequences of moving in a different direction to the one he had espoused. With Clegg, he tried his best in his formulaic opening: ‘Nick, how’s it going … have you had much sleep?’ But the polite formalities were brief.

Quickly Brown made clear that Labour would offer a referendum on electoral reform as its top priority. A Lib/Lab coalition would be united in its support. To Brown’s annoyed dismay, Clegg showed limited enthusiasm. He told Brown that he thought there were insuperable obstacles in terms of the parliamentary arithmetic and political legitimacy if the parties that came second and third formed a government, but he acknowledged the Lib Dems had more in common with Labour than the Conservatives. The two were speaking blindly, having spent the preceding hours acquiring wholly different mindsets. Clegg had been enthused by Cameron. Brown had become increasingly excited by his conversations with Adonis in particular about a Lib/Lab coalition. Characteristically, Brown did not give up, pointing out to Clegg that his party would find it far easier working with Labour. To Clegg’s sleepless fury Brown suggested that the Lib Dems would not tolerate an arrangement with the Conservatives, especially when Labour was holding out the historic chance to change the voting system. Brown could not hide his frustration. He never could, whether in cabinet meetings, in one-to-one sessions with Blair, or during long-winded international gatherings. For a calculating politician, Brown was also surprisingly transparent.

As far as Clegg was concerned Brown had been too transparent. One of Clegg’s team briefed the BBC that the call had been bad-tempered. Evidently they wanted to signal to their party that a route towards Labour was fraught with difficulties. If Clegg had felt instinctively more solicitous towards Brown he would have controlled his annoyance. He did not bother to do so.

At which point the media, a pivotal element in the entire New Labour saga, played its part in one final decision. Since the early hours of Friday morning some newspapers had screamed that Brown appeared determined to ‘squat’ in Number Ten. In fact until a new government could be formed he had a constitutional duty to remain in place. But in order not to look like a trespassing obsessive, Brown left Number Ten on the Saturday morning to spend the weekend in his constituency. Briefly he left the heart of the government’s operation when there was still much to do, not least in speaking to Labour MPs about the plans for a coalition. He did spend much of his time on the Saturday when he was in Scotland speaking to union leaders in order to get their support for what he was doing. He still had a hold of a sort over them. No union leader spoke out against a Lib/Lab coalition in the days that followed.

While Brown spoke to union leaders, Adonis contacted his friends in the Liberal Democrats, those with whom they had discussed for years the possibility of realignment. His conversations with Ashdown were especially fruitful. Adonis argued with his engaging modest conviction – an approach to politics and journalism that had captivated Roy Jenkins more than a decade earlier – that the parliamentary arithmetic did not rule out a Lib/Lab coalition. With patient persistence he pointed out that a Lib/Lab government would have 315 seats compared with 306 for the Conservatives. Although this was not an overall majority it was safe to assume that the assorted nationalists would not bring down the coalition in alliance with the Tories. Adonis made it clear that Brown was not necessarily proposing a ‘rainbow coalition’ with several other minority parties, as the media continued to report, but a Lib/Lab government that would rule at least long enough to introduce electoral reform.

Ashdown started to sway towards such an arrangement. Three other former leaders, Ming Campbell, Charles Kennedy and David Steel, also indicated privately or in Steel’s case publicly that they would prefer an arrangement with Labour. Adonis also had considerable influence on Tony Blair. Brown had spoken to Blair on the Friday and noted his scepticism about the feasibility of a Lib/Lab coalition because of the parliamentary arithmetic. Over the weekend Blair became more supportive of the idea.

In every frenzied conversation involving Adonis, Mandelson and senior Liberal Democrats, the position of Brown was raised as an overwhelming obstacle. Clegg had stated during the campaign that he could not do a deal with a defeated Brown. Over the weekend Ashdown told Adonis the same. A close ally of Clegg’s, Neil Sherlock, who had spent as many hours as Adonis contemplating a realignment on the centre left, also made it clear that no deal could be done with Brown continuing for any length of time as Labour’s leader. Vince Cable spoke directly to Brown several times over the weekend. The two were old friends. Cable retained a certain limited respect for Brown and the two of them shared a fair amount of common political ground, at least in relation to economic policy. He gave a much stronger indication than Clegg that he would prefer to work with Labour, an appetite heightened perhaps by the fact that he was not part of the Liberal Democrats’ negotiating team and had in Brown’s view been deliberately marginalized by Clegg. At one point Cable told Brown: ‘Emotionally I’m closer to Labour.’

Cable’s final call to Brown was at six in the morning on the Monday. He told him that his departure was an essential condition to a deal. This was not expressed as an ultimatum. Cable knew that Brown was willing to resign in order to facilitate a deal. His call was merely confirmation that in order to open the door for serious negotiation a public declaration was necessary. Clegg had made the same point in his discussions with Brown, although he had not promised that negotiations would open as a result.

Brown took no persuading. Adonis, who had never worked closely with him, least of all in an atmosphere of nerve-racking intensity, was impressed and surprised by his resolute determination. Brown was ready to announce his resignation and had informed Clegg of his willingness to do so in a one-to-one meeting on the Saturday morning. The only issue was over precisely when. Cable had suggested the key moment would be after the meeting of Liberal Democrat MPs that would take place early on Monday afternoon.

Brown met Clegg again at the Commons on the Monday morning and was even more direct: ‘Policies are not the issue between us – we are agreed on most issues. I am sure we could form a Progressive Alliance between us. I genuinely believe it could work … If it increases the possibility of forming a Progressive Alliance, I am prepared to stand aside as Labour leader.’

While Brown, Campbell and Mandelson composed a statement late on Monday morning, the group they regarded as their ace card, Clegg’s MPs, expressed concern at a formal deal with the Conservatives at their private meeting. The nature of the discussion at the meeting of the Liberal Democrats’ parliamentary party focused less on what the negotiating team had brought back from their discussions with the Tories and more on the need to find out what Labour had to offer as an alternative route. Several MPs, including their former leader, Sir Ming Campbell, argued that realignment on the centre left had been the party’s great mission and this was not the way to bring it about. Clegg replied openly wondering whether the reservations were generational, and to some extent geographical, with a lot of the concerns coming from older Scottish Liberal Democrats.

The meeting broke up with an announcement that the negotiating team would seek ‘clarification’ on some issues with their Conservative counterparts. The term was a euphemism that allowed the two wings of the Liberal Democrats to play for time. As far as David Laws was concerned, clarification related to a few minor details in relation to the pupil premium, a policy that united both parties. The social democratic wing had growing hopes that in the space still left a deal could be reached with Labour.

At which point Brown played his card. Those who were with him as he prepared to announce his resignation were struck by his calm. Brown could erupt angrily over trivial matters and remain focused when the political temperature reached boiling point. Speaking outside Number Ten, he seemed fleetingly to have changed the dynamics of British politics once more:

Mr Clegg has just informed me that while he intends to continue his dialogue that he has begun with the Conservatives, he now wishes also to take forward formal discussions with the Labour Party. I believe it is sensible and it’s in the national interest to respond positively. There is also a progressive majority in Britain, and I believe it could be in the interests of the whole country to form a progressive coalition government. I would however like to say something also about my own position. If it becomes clear that the national interest, which is stable and principled government, can be best served by forming a coalition between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats then I believe I should discharge that duty, to form that government, which would in my view command a majority in the House of Commons in the Queen’s speech and any other confidence votes. But I have no desire to stay in my position longer than is needed to ensure the path to economic growth is assured and the process of political reform we have agreed moves forward quickly. The reason that we have a hung parliament is that no single party and no single leader was able to win the full support of the country. As leader of my party I must accept that that is a judgement on me. I therefore intend to ask the Labour Party to set in train the processes needed for its own leadership election.

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