Two recent politic stories highlight just how rapidly remaining differences between the only two political parties in Britain capable of forming governments continue to erode. That can only be to the detriment of voter choice.

First off, we read that the Smith Institute – a thinktank linked with Gordon Brown – and the Centre for Social Justice – a thinktank linked with Iain Duncan Smith – are to publish a joint strategy on how to get children out of poverty.

As Guardian reporter Andrew Wintour notes, accurately enough: “The joint initiative suggests the differences between the two parties are much smaller than they pretend.”

Indeed, the whole exercise is being dressed up as an attempt to ‘take the issue out of party politics’. This, we are supposed to believe, cannot be other than a Good Thing. But is this necessarily the case?

Obviously one must await publication of the report before offering any assessment. But it seems inconceivable that it will come up with proposals that represent anything other than further ideological capitulation by Labour to centre-right ideas.

After all, it is not as if the Tories – who throughout their history have upheld but one unrelenting purpose, namely to represent the minority of wealthy people that control society – have become converted to anything even vaguely resembling social democracy.

Of course it is legitimate to argue about the relative merits of different anti-poverty approaches. But in acting in this cartel like manner, Labour and the Conservatives surely merit reference to the Office of Fair Trading. What they are doing is closing down the debate before it can evan be had.

Meanwhile, Ken Livingstone has promised that he will offer Boris Johnson a job in a Labour administration if he wins the London mayor election on Thursday, and will virtually train up his Conservative opponent for a second shot in 2012:

Certainly if I get elected this time, I will phone people up and say “I want you to come in and do this [job] for the benefit of London”. If Boris doesn’t win, I am not certain Cameron is ever going to put him in one of the great offices of state, so I suspect he will be back for another go. He would be a better mayor [for having worked in the administration].

I think Boris is a person of huge potential, but he’s never been involved in detailed administration of anything. I would genuinely want Boris to come in, take a job and get some experience.

This, after building an entire campaign on painting Johnson as a rather nasty racist. I’m confused, Ken … who do I vote for if I want to see Johnson clear off back to Henley where he belongs, rather than sitting behind a desk at City Hall? Not you, it seems.

Gestures like this can only feed public cynicism, enhancing suspicions that the political class is a narrow clique that looks after its own through an all-inclusive popular front. Win or lose, Boris wins.

Such practices ape some of the worst aspects of US municipal politics. I’m still occasionally in touch with an old college buddy who is a leftwing Democrat with big time political ambitions.

He holds an important job in a major American city, which he got more or less as an explicit trade-off for withdrawing from a run for Congress and throwing the Irish vote behind the mayor’s preferred candidate. But at least that was a Democrat-Democrat in house transaction.

Livingstone’s enthusiasm for non-Labour forces has driven him to agreeing a vote transfer pact with the Greens and making remarks just short of a de facto endorsement of George Galloway’s bid for an assembly seat at the head of the Respect Renewal list:

I would like to think we could work together and [Galloway would] form part of a broad coalition with the Greens and us against the Tories and Islamophobes,

It looks like Livingstone is running his own mini version of the Big Tent strategy that has not worked particularly well for Brown.

Ironically, this is the man who once wrote a book with the title ‘If Voting Changed Anything, They’d Abolish it’. It’s a shame to see him provide further confirmation.