If you don’t like the sound of teeth being gritted, never ask a Labour MP how they feel about cooperation with the Liberal Democrats. “I know it makes sense,” one member of the shadow cabinet recently gnashed their molars to me. “But it really sticks in the craw.”
That is an effusion of affection compared with their history of bitter animosity. They weren’t speaking when Jeremy Corbyn led Labour. Corbynites treated the Lib Dems as indistinguishable from Tories – or, worse, Blairites – and Lib Dems regarded Mr Corbyn with horror. During the Cameron-Clegg coalition years, Labour people were often much more vicious about the Lib Dems for participating in that government than they were about the Tories who dominated it.
