I have news for those parts of the UK and international press trying to portray Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats and now Deputy Prime Minister, as a man engaged in a healthy new form of politics.
The fact that he read archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge is portentous. For so did Prince Charles (in his first year). I see a new cabal of power and privilege coalescing - far more sinister than that of the Cambridge men who ruled the Treasury in the 1990s.
(Meanwhile, for ambitious readers, there's an interesting anthropology degree course offered by the University of Malta, dominated by Cambridge men, etc., I can talk to you about.)
Actually, I'm not sure that is the wildest thing I have heard said about the UK's new coalition government. So much commentary is spin that it is difficult to say whether some pundits are blind to the obvious or else think it prudent not to mention it.
The fact is that all claims that "the country" really wanted the indecisive electoral result are silent about the strong geographical slant of the vote. The United Kingdom, remember, is so-called because it is made up of more than one nation: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. David Cameron's Conservatives would have won a handsome electoral victory had the election been held in England alone but Scotland and Wales are strongly anti-Conservative (while Northern Ireland has its own distinctive political parties).
A geographical slant is also pronounced in Labour's result. It held on to just 12 seats in southern England. The claim by the Scottish National Party leader, Alex Salmond - that a Lib-Lab coalition in partnership with the progressive parties of the smaller nations would have united the country in a rainbow coalition - left out two important parts of the political jigsaw.
The first is that the smaller regional parties would have exacted a hefty price for their support: little or no budget cuts at a time of fiscal austerity. The second part of the jigsaw is that, in those circumstances, the fiscal burden imposed by a Labour Prime Minister would have fallen disproportionately on England, where a Labour government had been roundly rejected.
With the actual coalition government, the politics of non-representation is also going to play its part. Should the Conservative Chancellor, George Osborne, go ahead with his planned, drastic cuts in his emergency Budget in June, voters in Scotland (where the Conservatives came in fourth place, with just one seat) and Wales will feel the cuts were being imposed by a political party they had overwhelmingly voted against. While those who voted Liberal Democrat will feel betrayed.
The "uncertainty" of the vote of May 6 only seems so when taken for the UK as a whole. On a regional scale, voters seem more decisive about whom they rejected.
The overall result does not reflect some new voter consciousness but a crisis of representation. I assume that the UK pundits are largely skirting round this topic so as not to exacerbate what could be a nasty political turn. Difficult economic periods often see a growth in the appeal of populist identity politics.
No new politics in that. But then, the Liberal Democrats do not really represent "new politics" either. In their campaigns, the Lib-Dems are as steeped in the conjuring tricks of cliché and hackery as either of their two larger rivals.
I know that from personal experience. A Cambridge resident in the 1990s, I voted for the Lib-Dems in the local council elections. But that did not blind me to their contribution to partisan bickering, not to mention the puzzling details concerning the paving of one of the core town squares. And though I had no right to vote in the 1997 general election, a voting document was nonetheless spirited through my mailbox within 90 minutes of my street's Lib-Dem organiser discovering my sympathies. (Yes, I used it - unrepentantly.)
Where does that leave their ground troops with respect to this coalition? Currently thrilled that many of their proposals form part of a government programme. But also wary of what a difficult economic climate might do to their vote in the next general election. Mr Clegg's hold over his parliamentary party will weaken as soon as his MPs begin to feel their seats are under threat. Such MPs may respond by going beyond rebellion and defecting, depending on their constituency, either to Labour or to the Conservatives. It has twice happened to rumps of the Liberals in the past.
We now know that at least four senior Lib-Dems had strong reservations about the "marriage" with the Conservatives. The overwhelming majority of their party are keen on the wedding's "something borrowed" (their policies) and "something new". But the grandees with historical perspective are anxious about the wedding's two other elements: something old and, shudder, something blue.
ranierfsadni@europe.com