ABefore the last elections, the Government was still playing the game of double dating, or double blackmail, in which it held the PS and Chega responsible for any failure of its measures or approval of anything that did not come from the Executive or the AD bench, feeding the unlikely narrative of an alliance between Pedro Nuno Santos and André Ventura. They were “negative coalitions”, one of the most absurd concepts that national politics invented. The AD, which was tenths above the PS and which had the narrowest government majority ever, should govern as if it had an absolute majority. The Spinumviva case, which in times of need would have destroyed the career of a prime minister, allowed a political crisis to be forced, with Montenegro strengthening its position and Ventura formally becoming leader of the opposition. After months of “no, no”, with no one knowing exactly what they mean, things became clearer.