Even that wasn't as odd as the Lib Dems' experience. Here the voters did use italics. The electoral system was just the same, but the electorate had rediscovered the art of tactical voting, and moved towards three-party politics for the first time since the 1920s. Our new prime minister was more pleased by the Lib Dem success than by his own majority. Whether Ashdown should have accepted office, even if he had held the parliamentary balance, is another matter.
Third parties face contrasting dangers.
The former is exacerbated by proportional representation. Here, the historical tendency has been toward decorous but anonymous marriage, rather as a woman called Susan Brown used to become Mrs John Smith. By the 1900s, the Tories had absorbed the Liberal Unionists, and by the 1940s they had absorbed the National Liberals. Labour has had its own cannibalistic tendencies. In that way, Blair's fundamental attitude is acquisitive - and quite unhistorical.