DESPITE the jaundiced view of politics which so many of us now share, the "co" has 
nothing to do with companies or big business, though it
 is synonymous with "com" – and indeed "con".

It just means together. The second half of the word comes from the Latin noun derived from the verb "alescere" which means "to grow up".

I refer of course to coalition, though we may well think that our current Coalition Government has done little in the way of coalescing or (in the less common verb) coalizing, and given even less indication that it is composed of grown-ups. Like all governments it is, however, quite keen on the idea of governing, even if that hasn't turned out to be its long suit.

That is a shame, because some of us hoped that there was the promise of real change when David Cameron and Nick Clegg announced the Coalition agreement in the rose garden of Number 10 Downing Street after the 2010 election. Part of that change was supposed to be a reformation of government, including such things as a reduction in centralisation and in the number of MPs, increased devolution to local authorities, far fewer spin doctors and special advisors, a "bonfire of the quangos" and other similarly admirable ambitions. We should have known better.

Messrs Cameron and Clegg may even then have been subconsciously echoing the sentiments of the country singer Lynn Anderson, who topped the charts with "(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden" in 1970. Now they look much more like the B-side of that single, which was called "Nothing Between Us" – in their case, not in the sense of unanimity, but of total disengagement and mutual disenchantment.

The Prime Minister's own party is urging him to ditch the Liberal Democrats before the next General Election, though the agreement specifies that the two parties should work together until 2015. Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee of back-bench Tory MPs, and Bernard Jenkin, who chairs the Commons public accounts committee, have expressed the view that their party needs six months of separation from their Coalition partners in order to stand a chance of winning a majority, by advocating distinctively Conservative policies.

Much as I'd like to see some of those, I'm far from convinced that they would be a sure-fire recipe for electoral success. The problem is that though no-one (not even the people in it) much likes the Coalition, no one seems very keen on the other options either.

Even if moving the Tories to the right would bring them more support – something which, as I say, I rather doubt – it would not be enough to give them a majority. Even if Ukip's surge has stalled, it has enough support to damage the Conservatives, and will probably do well in the European elections. Besides, even without Ukip, there are enough traditional Tory voters so disenchanted with Mr Cameron that the party will never win them back while he leads it.

The Labour Party's lead, which some polls suggest has fallen as low as six points, isn't just dismal because the party has not yet found a convincing alternative to the Coalition's policies or because of the shambles in Falkirk. It's also because Ed Miliband has far and away the lowest approval rating of any party leader, and one of the lowest of any party leader ever. Mr Cameron is consistently more popular than the party he leads; Mr Miliband is consistently outpolled by his party. Even the people who like his policies don't like him.

The Liberal Democrats have not only the problem of having disenchanted a great many of their former supporters, but of being unable to give any indication of what kind of party they are likely to be in 2015, or even of who will be leading it. That's because if – as seems likely – no party achieves an overall majority, we may well have another Coalition, though it would be foolhardy to predict what sort. Or we may get a minority government which is unable to legislate effectively.

Though everything could change if there is some unforeseen shattering event, the overwhelming likelihood at the moment is that no-one will get what he or she wants. That will include Nationalist voters, if, as all the polls suggest, Scots choose to remain in the United Kingdom in next year's referendum. (Of course, if the vote goes the other way, the political landscape will be completely unrecognisable anyway.)

This unsatisfactory state of affairs is entirely due to the Coalition's failure to operate as its party leaders vowed to back in 2010. And though I was optimistic about that agenda, which accounts for my disillusionment, it wouldn't have mattered if the rest of the electorate disagreed. That, at least, would have meant that coalition had been tried and rejected.

But because it has not been properly tried at all, the electorate faces what opponents of PR long argued would happen when no one party can ever gain a majority, and which LibDems always vociferously denied would happen. That is that the character of the next government will be determined, not by the voters, but by private meetings of party apparatchiks, whose priorities will be squaring their own support and appeasing their activists, rather than doing what they believe the country needs.

Despite Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg's assurances, coalition has not led to a new type of politics; indeed, it is the very fact that there is a coalition which has prevented, for example, reform of Parliament. The LibDems blocked boundary changes which would, amongst other things, have cut the number of MPs because their proposed reform of the Lords (which would have been even worse than what we have now) was blocked by back-bench Tories. The Conservatives, meanwhile, have been trying to give their own supporters the impression that their Coalition partners make it impossible for them to drive through the policies they would really like to see, when the truth is that the only thing holding them back is their own timidity.

This has not just been an opportunity to reshape politics squandered, but it may have condemned us, for the foreseeable future, to more of the same. If coalition were going to work in the UK as it does in many other Western democracies, it would require a fundamental rethinking of our politics – something voters of all stripes seem fairly keen on. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be something this Coalition is able to do. Unless they can manage it, or one of the main parties manages to get its act together, nothing's going to be coming up roses .