I’m speaking at a conference in Paris tomorrow, about the recent uk election which, to many people’s surprise, produced a Conservative majority rather than another hung Parliament. The subject of my paper is the Conservatives’ rout of the Liberal Democrats in England, which – along with events in Scotland – explains the difference. I am going to look at this from an historical perspective. My argument begins from the claim that although this isn’t a hung Parliament, the outcome is a direct result of the fact that the last Parliament was a hung Parliament. It was a consequence of coalition and the decisions taken by the Liberal Democrats in 2010.