Those who end up in prison or deposed or dead will not do the same thing again. And those like them will think twice or three times before launching upon their own butcheries Some stories never admit a happy ending. In those cases, you have to make sure that at least they have an ending. An insincere pact or a bad agreement can only guarantee that they continue.This article is from a series produced by the International Parliament of Writers. WHEN BISMARCK bemoaned the "Nightmare of Coalitions", it was the devilish intricacies of 19th-century European power politics he had in mind. Today, as the talks between Labour and the Liberal Democrats grind on in Scotland and Wales, the phrase has a revived resonance.

Tony Blair has exchanged the sunlit uplands of absolute power for the treacherous sands of coalition in two parts of the United Kingdom - the two, as it happens, where Labour has so long been the Establishment party that it had almost forgotten there was anyone else out there. Until devolution, the domestic clout of a British Prime Minister was unrivalled in modern democracies This style of leadership suited Mr Blair well. He's a natural autocrat, whose outstanding skill lies in the ability to co-opt to his will. So far in his premiership, his practice has been to set a direction and issue everyone around him with a route map Deviation has been treated as treachery. His former aide, Tim Allan, summarised his old boss thus: "Tony is happy to have a lot of discussion about an issue. But there is always a bottom line." In coalition land, the rules are different. The bottom line is always negotiable: it has to be to get the coalition going in the first place, and sustain it.

This became immediately apparent in the Scottish Liberal Democrats' insistence that university tuition fees must be abolished if they are to join forces with Labour. Until now, Lib Dems could rail against charging students - and the Government could treat the protest with the same deference it reserves for petitions from the Wrottersley Polytechnic students union.But coalitions make large players out of small powers, and this was a canny clause to insert into the pre-nuptial agreement. A wise minor coalition partner makes demands that appeal to a wider audience than its own members. Fees are opposed by the Scottish Labour Party and also the Scottish Nationalists. More importantly, they're one of the few Blairite policies for which there is scant middle-class support north or south of the border.It was not unreasonable, at a time when the entire welfare state is being recast, to demand that students pay back some of the cost of their higher education when they begin earning higher salaries as a result But no one ever said that middle Britain was consistent. We are all for people standing on their own two feet and paying their way, until young Jonathan is asked to fork out a contribution for his archaeology course.

Any reform of state roles meets the greatest resistance not from the poor and workless, but from the modestly affluent threatened with the removal of a long- established perk.On one thing we can rely when dealing with the Liberals anywhere - their approach to spending money is that of a teenager given a credit card with the bill sent to his parents. Jim Wallace, their leader in Scotland, has already said that the cost of abolishing the fees should be met from the Government's contingency fund. That would happen to be the same fund the Chancellor of the Exchequer has said is absorbing the mounting costs of the war over Kosovo, and also any other eventualities which might come along to ruffle the smooth surface of Treasury planning.It is absurd that the Government should be called upon to pay for the repeal of a policy that it imposed. The alternative is to require the Scots to pay for it themselves by allowing them to raise up to three pence in the pound in income tax. Blairites are concerned that any such change in the headline tax figure anywhere in the UK risks exposing it to attacks as a high-tax party. But the Government should take the risk and bat this one back to Scotland.

Nothing would set a worse precedent than bailing Edinburgh out of the consequences of its decisions from the start.Devolution has strong advantages. It responds to the settled will of the people for more autonomy - a reasonable demand given the distinct political and cultural traditions in Scotland. But there has been a strong streak of denial in the Government's thinking about what follows. Listening to one of the brightest and best in Scottish Labour chirping away about the defeat of the Nationalists, I pointed out that the problems for Labour would inevitably increase after the election, whereas the Nationalists would get a new lease of life as a bullish minority party. "There won't be any problems," said my interlocutor, doggedly on message.