Still no resolution to the British impasse. If the Labour leadership can deliver its rank-and-file MPs, the best guess must be that there will be a Lib-Lab deal, but that’s not such a little “if” as might be presumed. Firstly there’s the essentially tribal nature of British politics (or any politics anywhere, for that matter): At the local level, there is a basic lack of trust between many of the activists in each of the parties. They simply don’t get on. And then, as the WSJ’s Iain Martin shrewdly notes, there’s this:

Nick Clegg presumed when Gordon Brown promised him voting reform that he could deliver his Labour MPs. Lord Mandelson [the most brlliantly Machiavellian of all the New Labour Machiavellians] and co forgot that Scottish and northern Labour is now not far off half the Parliamentary Labour Party and disproportionately [skeptical about electoral reform].

Reforming the electoral system in a way that favors the Liberal Democrats is, of course, what Nick “nation before party” Clegg is after, so if Labour cannot deliver on this, there’s a problem. Martin thus concludes that Brown’s offer to the Liberal Democrats is “not worth the paper it is written on.” That goes too far. The promise of office or other patronage goodies will be worth a lot to many Labour waverers, as will the fear of deselection from their seats by those who stray too far from the party line. And then there’s the relief of that whole putting-off-the next-election-for-a-while thing.

Best guess: a Lib-Lab pact – but guess is the word.

Meanwhile, the markets wobble. Tick tock.