To hold all they have and win another score or so seats at the next general election in 2015, many think the Tories will need a miracle. They will certainly need a plan, but above all they will need a message. A clear message, not one fudged by the demands of coalition.
It is as plain as a pikestaff that the Tories and their Lib Dem partners have reached the ideological end of the road and are now talking at cross purposes and pulling in opposite directions. Each is vetoing the ideas of the other. It might now be best all round to have the Lib Dems leave the government with a six month Confidence and Supply agreement. Cameron cannot any longer, as the result of a minor constitutional amendment of his making, go to the Palace and request a dissolution. At the end of six months and a failed confidence vote, the Commons would very likely back a Dissolution Motion.
If it did not the Queen would be obliged to send for Miliband and invite him to form a government. This would most likely take the form of a Coalition with the Liberals, but it would have to include all the other parties to enjoy a majority. It would probably not be able to and would have to go forward without a certain majority for contentious bills until May 2015. Labour and the Liberals would then have to go to the country defending a less than ideal situation of a nation still hobbled by debt and cuts, seven years after the crash.
Whichever way it goes, the Tories would have a clear and simple message. We made progress with left leaning Lib Dems, but to do the job properly we need a majority. Cameron would look a very attractive option compared to Miliband and Clegg, by then ensnared in Coalition muddles and mess ups if in government, or if in opposition, having to come clean next spring with their own plans, which appear nowhere near thought through. Thirty seats could fall easily to the Conservatives either in 2013 or 2015.
The downside is that Miliband and Clegg form a government and do well, so that the country turns its back on the Tories. That would be a setback for the party, which has not won a general election since 1992, but all would not be lost forever. They have Boris.