Earlier today I had a bike ride in central London, where after heading down the river to Putney and back on the other bank (about 17 miles) I took a detour via Trafalgar Square to see the pro-PR protests. About 1000 or so people marched down Whitehall, past Downing Street and to Parliament to protest at what they see is a potential sell-out to the Tories by the Liberal Democrats, and the lost chance for a referendum on voting reform.

Nick Robinson of the BBC though reports on another possibility – a ‘progressive alliance’ or rainbow coalition that would take in Labour, the Lib Dems, the one Green MP, and various ‘nationalist’ parties in Wales, and Scotland. The Northern Irish SDLP would also be included. This would give a small majority.

It’s got to be a better prospect than Cameron as PM, with the Lib Dems working formally or informally with him. It’s unwieldy, would be subject to all sorts of deals to make and preserve alliances, and may not last long. It’s hard to see how Gordon Brown could head it, and the closer this looks to a possibility the quicker he should resign as leader of the Labour party in order to move that along. I think he could do that while still PM – John Major did it in the 1990s to force his enemies to confront him head on, which is when Michael Portillo probably had his best chance of being leader, only he chose not to go public and Major beat John Redwood. Then Brown could remain PM until the detail of the other alliance was worked out, but with the knowledge he would not be its head.

One of the problems of the leaders debate was that it made it appear that people were chosing a PM, when we actually chose MPs who effectively chose the PM. But it’s entirely possible that the next PM was not involved in those debates, and not one of the three party leaders laying wreaths at the Cenotaph for VE day on Whitehall earlier today.

Something to hold out some hope for. There were other positives in Thursday’s election, which was not nearly as bad as I’d feared. The British National Party were trounced and lost the council seats they had; UKIP didn’t get seats; there was a Green MP elected; Cameron didn’t get a majority; the Labour party were not annihilated, leaving open the possibility of a swift return to power, rather than out for a generation as in 1979-97 (though maybe even sooner)…