This article is an opinion piece and does not necessarily represent the views of the Times Group Plc.

Half way through its Parliamentary term, the Government is trying to improve its communications. The senior communications officer for the government, /u/WillShakespeare99, is instituting a new system of press conferences so that Government can talk to the press pack and, presumably, get its message out to the public.

This is an admirable aim, of course, but it rather puts the cart before the horse. Why buy a state of the art PA system when you have no instruments or anybody who can play them?

When the Tory-Labour coalition formed, it came with bold promises. A grand coalition promising a well-managed hard brexit, a stable Government that would follow through on its promises, a strong coalition that commands the votes of a majority of the electorate. The rest of Parliament was understandably completely wrong-footed by the googly they just received, so much so that the official opposition was a ten MP outfit up against a Government five times its size.

Faced with an ideologically divided opposition, it seemed that if the Grand Coalition held its nerve, this Parliament would be an absolute doddle.

Forming the Grand Coalition in itself was quite a feat of politics; two parties inherently and almost mortally opposed had formed a coalition of Government, with each agreeing to work with the other. There was no significant fall-out from the negotiations, and no particular scandal to signify that there was any bubbling resentment with the deal. Yes, some of the more left-wing of the Labour Party expressed discontent in private, but one of those ended up being promoted to the cabinet, so it can't have been too bad a deal, could it?

Fast forward to last week, and a significant portion of Labour MPs have been kicked out of the Commons for inactivity. The Labour leader himself managed only to attend 56% of votes, and the Government has to face the embarrassment that its Deputy Prime Minister is no longer an MP.

So what went wrong?

This result is an inevitable symptom of the Grand Coalition's foundational myth. The coalition is morally right because over half the electorate voted for it. Only this coalition can possibly achieve the ends Britain needs. The fact these two great powers have come together is in itself a vindication of the project. This is quite possibly the end of politics. Ideology has been ejected, and pragmatism is taking centre-stage.

In short, the coalition started with arrogance and hubris, and what we've seen in the last few days is the predictable schadenfreude.

Within days and weeks of formation, it became apparent that the Government wasn't going to speak to Parliament. Ministers stopped showing up to MQs. One Tory minister preferred to spend the first two days on a jolly at the Tory Party conference than answer questions on housing policy. When the decision came to bomb Syria, Parliament demanded from the Government, and the Speaker, that a vote be held. Motions were passed after the event. Neither motion has been answered by the Government.

And then came the petition for a final referendum. I have documented the history of the DDEA in this newspaper before, and won't repeat its content here. Suffice it to say, though, that one half of this Government is committing the most heinous kind of political hypocrisy, and is being aided and abetted by their former enemies. The individual who shut down the petition is a senior Labour Party MP, and recent reports from the Red Clydesider suggest this occurred without his consulting cabinet.

Finally is the news from this morning that the Government is intending to stonewall another referendum, this time for welfare devolution in Scotland. In typical Grand Coalition style, the answer is an old politician's trick; listen to the question, than answer as if you'd heard a different one. Only, this time, the Government made its decision not only without consulting Parliament but also, again, without consulting its own cabinet, or what's left of it.

One wonders how the Scottish Tories and Scottish Labour Party will fare in the current Holyrood campaign given these revelations.

So, in short order, we have the Government scorning Parliament, ignoring the people and not deigning to consult even its own cabinet.

Add all this to the Labour Party's absenteeism, and one has to wonder: how long does the Grand Coalition have left? Devoid of imagination, with a predilection for ignoring Parliament and its own cabinet, and apparently losing internal support to inertia, this failing experiment may well be in its death throes.