Scotland's coalition government often resembles a leaky ship drifting close to the rocks of parliamentary disaster. Appropriate, then, that it should be foundering on a seaborne issue: the future of the fishing industry.
Labour ministers and MSPs have accused their Liberal Democrat partners of treachery and self-serving opportunism; a Liberal Democrat minister has resigned; the Scottish Executive is at war with the Scottish Parliament; and no one is taking bets on how long the coalition will stay afloat.
Procedural anoraks are talking of a "constitutional crisis" and a "challenge to democracy", but there are more practical political lessons to be learnt. One is that proportional representation, and the cross-party co-operation it apparently engenders, is not the neat solution to democratic deficiency that its supporters claim.
Another (remembered by those who still cherish the memory of the Blair-Ashdown "project") is the impossibility of getting Labour and the Liberal Democrats to snuggle up to each other in government.
The latest crack in the coalition is a clear example of the Liberal Democrats accepting the kudos of power, but blithely rejecting the joint responsibilities of government when it suits them. While Labour can be tightly whipped, the Liberal Democrats are anarchic - and, having battled bitterly at local level for generations, many on both sides heartily detest each other.
Not for the first time, they have found a coalition may be a marriage of convenience, but it is unlikely to last when one of the partners is repeatedly unfaithful.
The crisis sailed over the horizon when an armada of 160 fishing boats cruised up the Firth of Forth off Edinburgh, demanding the Scottish Executive's help to save what is left of their industry.
Forced by the EU closure of "cod boxes" into areas where they would slaughter millions of young haddock, they voluntarily tied up their boats. The fishermen expected the executive to compensate them for staying in the harbour to preserve their dwindling fish stock in the North Sea. Henry McLeish, the First Minister, and the fisheries minister, Rhona Brankin, decided against this short-term remedy, or tie-up scheme; she offered £27m for permanent decommissioning of boats and crews. The UK government is against both decommissioning and a tie-up scheme.
But then the parliament voted 55-55 on a tie-up scheme, after a Tory-SNP ambush and defections by four Liberal Democrat MSPs. For the first time, the presiding officer, Sir David Steel, cast a deciding vote - and, contrary to Westminster conventions (which are not binding on him) he gave it to the opposition.
The government had only itself to blame because the parliament minister, Tom McCabe, got his sums wrong. With his own party, he is a strict disciplinarian but he lacks the subtle skills needed to stitch up an unravelling coalition.
His mistake was in counting on Liberal Democrat MSPs to vote with their leaders. Normally, up to six Liberal Democrats can vote against the government and it will still have a majority. However, 13 Labour MSPs and ministers were allowed to leave for the Scottish Labour conference in Inverness.
The fall-out overshadowed the conference and Tony Blair's rallying call to the Scottish party. Ministers and MSPs raged at the "unwhippable", "unprincipled" and "hypocritical" Liberal Democrats - epithets they used when the coalition last threatened to fall apart over tuition fees.
McLeish is having to damp down Labour demands for revenge. These include blocking proportional representation for local government elections, an article of faith with the Liberal Democrats, and removing them from committee chairmanships - either of which would cause the complete collapse of the coalition.
It is claimed the Liberal Democrats have callously dumped the coalition as a ploy to distance themselves from Labour in the coming UK election. Also accused of electioneering is the former SNP leader Alex Salmond, who has resigned as MSP to lead the Scot Nats' campaign for Westminster, and who is a regular at fishermen's meetings in his Banff and Buchan constituency. As he says: "We're off the fishing pages and on to the front pages."
The net result is that Labour may trawl for votes in the harbour towns, but it is the opposition who are now regarded as the fishermen's friends.
Meanwhile, for the fishing industry, the outcome is likely to be a fudge, which would pay a portion of the £27m aid package for immediate "conservation" measures. Not a tie-up scheme, but a sail about and don't catch fish scheme.
The present political storm may subside, but there will be new squalls in the coming general election.
While the Lib Dem leader, Jim Wallace, sits side by side with Labour in government, his members will be fighting them in the constituencies. How long can the coalition craft keep sailing with such a mutinous crew? Should the Liberal Democrats walk the plank?
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