The Labour tactical voters who swept the Lib Dems home in Romsey are thus the key to a paradoxical outcome. They're supporting a cause that transcends a party structure which people have little faith in. Voting to keep the Tories out, they support a party bent on weakening Labour as the only way to get a voting system that will benefit itself. What we've just learned is that there's a better chance of this happening. The electorate is multiparty.
Contradiction suits it.
The same voters do different things at the same time. They reject the models of allegiance and discipline dinned into us from political birth, and cultivated with ever more frenetic displays of pseudo-mastery by Blair and Hague. These look like old politics. The people more in sync with the times hang loose, with fewer pretensions, more catholic friends and a quieter voice.