This weekend 51 years ago then Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe was in discussion with Tory leader Ted Heath about forming a coalition Government. The talks failed and Harold Wilson became Prime Minister at the head of a minority Labour administration.
Another feature of that Election, less noticed, is representation in three out of the four nations of the UK started to change. From 1945 the Tories and Labour had dominated Parliament with a handful of Liberals.
The February 1974 Election saw the first election of numbers of SNP, Plaid Cymru and Ulster Unionist MPs. The last having broken with their historic links with the Tory Party.
That representation has maintained, and in the case of the SNP, grown, at subsequent elections.
Parliamentary elections are a basic echo of actual moods on the ground and it can be argued 51 years ago that the February 1974 Election began to suggest the break up of Britain
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