Lib Dems sowed the seeds of their own destruction the moment they agreed to form a coalition

The party no longer has a base – just a few random seats

(Getty Images)

It is difficult to survey the wreckage of the Liberal Democrats without considering what might have been. Today the party has not only been slaughtered in the Commons, with the corpses of past and future leaders lying sat the feet of Nick Clegg, but the party has also been wiped out in local government, in Europe and in Scottish and Welsh bodies.

The south-west base, and the bridgeheads in Labour's northern heartlands, have been washed away. They are no longer the usual challengers in Tory seats. Membership is lower than Ukip's. Unbelievably, the party is back to where it was before the Jeremy Thorpe revival of the then Liberal Party in the early 1970s.

Unlike Labour in 1983 or the Tories in 1997, the Lib Dems have no bedrock to retreat to; just a few near-random seats. No longer a political force in Parliament it is again a collection of personalities, not all of them charismatic, and small enough to fit in a people carrier.

Meanwhile what of David Cameron? Just as Clegg has paid an awful price for putting country before party, so Cameron has secured his narrowest of victories by jeopardising the country's future to appease his own party.

Clearly, the SNPs jump in popular support came as an immediate reaction to Cameron's pledge about 'Engligh Votes for English Laws', followed up by inflammatory rhetoric about the SNP during the campaign. It is hard to see Cameron delivering any constitutional settlement that is acceptable to majority opinion in Scotland. Independence now has a grim inevitability about it.

It might be triggered by Cameron's other uneccessary pledge - the EU referendum, where Scotland's will could be overriden by an English 'no' vote. By accident, almost, the UK could exit the EU and break up in the same week sometime in 2017. Cameron wants to serve as PM for a full second term; he may not be prime minister of very much at the end of it.