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As dawn breaks on Friday 7th May 2010 it is clear that no one has won the general election. David Cameron’s Conservative party has failed to gain a majority. Gordon Brown’s Labour has lost over 90 seats and, despite a storming performance in the campaign, Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats have actually lost 5 MPs. No one is sure what happens next.

It is a unique moment in British political history - five tense and dramatic days as exhausted politicians try and find a way to form a government.

What emerges on day five is Britain’s first peacetime coalition since the 1930s, an agreement to rule for five years between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
Things had moved incredibly fast. On Friday morning, as votes were tallied, and after a sleepless night, Nick Clegg announces he will talk to the party with the most votes first - the Conservatives. David Cameron takes the initiative almost immediately, making a big offer of coalition that afternoon. Labour is down but still not out as Gordon Brown is advised he too could make the Lib Dems an offer.

What follows is five days of secret meetings, offers and counter offers. Who will give Nick Clegg what he really wants – a referendum on voting reform?

In the end it is the Conservatives who seal the deal. Together the parties work to deliver five years of stable but difficult government that brings in a period of austerity, and a referendum that fails to deliver a more proportional voting system.

But there is a clear winner, and a clear loser from sharing power. The 2015 election reduces the Lib Dems to eight seats in Parliament and Cameron finally gets his Conservative majority. Was going into power worth the political consequences for the junior coalition partner?

Kirsty Wark talks to the men who were in the room negotiating, and discusses how the dynamics of coalition shaped policy and party politics for years to come.

Producer: Marie Helly
Series Producer: David Prest
A Whistledown production for ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 4