Which Liberal Democrat MPs will be bold enough to risk damaging the coalition?
A couple of weeks ago, Jacqui Smith took part in a role-play exercise with a group of my students. Some of the students played backbench MPs. A small group played whips. And, with a staggering lack of imagination on my part, the former chief whip played chief whip. The whips won every vote, keeping dissent down to a minimum. It was nothing if not a realistic exercise – because however tricky forthcoming parliamentary votes sometimes look, in the end it is almost always the government that wins.
Don't forget that on the day of the top-up fees vote, back in 2004, and despite months of intense pressure by ministers and whips, the tallies kept by the whips' office that morning still predicted defeat by a margin of more than 20. Even right up to the vote, there was no confidence within the government that they had the bodies they needed to win. The whips' calculations went positive just 30 minutes before the vote, and they went on to win by five.
Compared with that, this government's difficulties over student fees are small fry. This article is being written in the week before the vote, and yet the chances of a government defeat already look tiny. The Liberal Democrats' public agonising over what stance to take might look amusing, and, for those who've been on the receiving end of Lib Dem campaigning in the past, seeing them suffer like this is the very definition of schadenfreude. But the parliamentary realities still point pretty clearly towards a government victory.
One of the ironies of the whole affair is that over the last decade the Lib Dems have been by far the most cohesive of the three main parties. Unlike the top-down approach of Labour and the Conservatives, the party's parliamentarians would debate their stance internally, to try to agree collective positions. They've been trying to do the same with fees – hence the recent three-hour meeting of the parliamentary party. The trouble is that in government this doesn't get plaudits for being consultative and inclusive, it gets derided for being weak. Three-hour meetings (at the end of which there still wasn't a decision) are unfortunately a luxury of opposition.
And anyway, there's no evidence it's working. At that meeting it became clear that there are a significant number of Lib Dem MPs who are going to vote against a rise in fees, come what may. If there are enough of them, and the rest follow the coalition agreement and abstain, then things could get sticky for the government whips. That won't be allowed to happen, and so if there is no way of agreeing a widespread (if not universal) abstention by the Lib Dems, then expect Nick Clegg et al to vote for the measure to act as a counterweight to the rebels. It could be a three-way car crash of a vote, but better that, so the leadership's thinking goes, than causing a fundamental split in the coalition within its first year.
The second irony of all of this is that it was the Lib Dems who prepared best for the possible consequences of a hung parliament – and yet whom have got themselves into the deepest trouble as a result of it. Whereas the other parties did almost no preparatory work until the election campaign had begun, a key group of Lib Dem MPs had been drafting policy and position papers since the new year, trying to anticipate how they could get the best deal. This makes the public signing of the NUS pledge on fees even more of a reckless act, as many Lib Dems now realise, because hung parliaments lead inevitably to broken promises.
At the point at which no party has a majority, the manifesto transforms from a set of pledges into a negotiating position. Coalition governments cannot function without broken promises – a point that was lost on those who went around before the last election saying how wonderful it would be if we had a hung parliament, because then the parties would "have to work together" (a phrase which always, with breathtaking arrogance, assumed that "working together" would mean policies identical to those matching the preferences and prejudices of the speaker).
And a final irony: when the vote takes place, those Lib Dem MPs who defy their whip and vote against removing the cap will be lauded as "brave" for having backbone and balls. Assuming there has been a three-way split, they will, of course, be doing so safe in the knowledge that the measure will pass, and that they won't be damaging the coalition, only because some of their colleagues – including those, like Clegg himself, who have considerable numbers of students in their constituency – are prepared to go into the opposite lobby. I know which of those positions is the really brave one to take.
• Philip Cowley is professor of parliamentary government at the University of Nottingham, and co-author of The British General Election of 2010 (Palgrave)