And so here we are with a new government with Dick Camerlegg at its helm.
So just how does this all work? There’s a joke going round at the moment that the coalition will take the name ‘Conservatives’ from the Conservatives and ‘Party’ from the Lib Dems.
And what of the party colours? It’s no good combining them as green is already taken. Perhaps they could follow one friend’s suggestion of sporting stripy yellow and blue ties (although I’d rather suggest an all blue number with small yellow polka-dots might be more fitting).
There’s no doubt that the press conference that followed the announcement of the coalition was a little bizarre. Never had two party leaders looked so comfortable in each other’s presence.
The BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson probably summed it up best when he said: “It was not so much a love-in as the exchanging of vows at a political civil partnership ceremony.”
And he questioned whether the pair would wake up the morning after the night before and wonder: “how they got hooked up for five years with someone they barely knew, and if their families would ever forgive them.”
Given this analogy, I suppose one would cast deputy Lib Dem leader Vince Cable (and new Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills), in the role of best man, uncomfortable that his mate had not only got hitched to someone he doesn’t much like, but aware that all kinds of compromises will have to follow over and above his friend’s availability to go out on a bender on a Saturday night.
In fact, Vince Cable was the only one of the new coalition to have the good grace to look just a tad uncomfortable about how things had panned out.
But the real question has to be what does it mean for us as users of services, not least the NHS?
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has confirmed that he intends to go further than Labour in making efficiency savings and the Lib Dems in its pre-election campaign had placed more emphasis on funding education than health.
The two parties do appear to agree on some NHS related issues such as the desire to get rid of targets, reduce the number of quangos, scale back the National Programme for IT and scrap centralised NHS patient records.
But we will have to wait to hear the results of the Emergency Budget due to be held within 50 days, to really know what to expect, by which time the partnership should be consummated and the honeymoon over.
For all our sakes let’s hope that the relationship blossoms because as the saying goes: ‘there’s nothing more dangerous than a lover spurned’.