A historic radical coalition of Labour and Liberal Democrats is possible after the 2015 election if the two parties can forgo their tribalism and look for common ground, Chris Huhne, the former Liberal Democrat cabinet minister suggests.

He says: "The assumption that the Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg having consolidated a centre right hold on the party is preparing to do a deal with the Tories is wrong."

He says an instinctive preference to do a deal with Labour is shared by Liberal Democrat supporters and probably most MPs, but within limits the decision will be shaped by what if any form of hung parliament emerges from the election.

The DNA of the Liberal Democrats is anti-Conservative, he insists.

Huhne is no longer in frontline politics, after he was jailed over asking his wife to take speeding points on his behalf, but he was a senior figure in the 2010 coalition negotiations, and his views reflect a strain of Liberal Democrat thinking.

Many senior Labour politicians, most recently the shadow Cabinet Office minister Michael Dugher, spurn all discussion and planning for a coalition post-2015 as defeatist.

There is also a deep antipathy in Labour to the Liberal Democrats for having joined with the Tories, prompting some senior Labour politicians to argue that in event of a hung parliament, they would prefer to try to govern alone as a minority administration.

Asked to give an assessment of whether Labour and the Liberal Democrats could find common policy ground after the election, Huhne in a piece for the Juncture, the journal of the centre-left thinktank the IPPR, suggests it is possible, even if the personal chemistry between some of the leading figures on either side is poor. He writes "a little less tribalism all round and a little more willingness to see the common ground could ease any issue of personal chemistry. If the votes fall the right way the potential for an historic radical coalition exists".

He says there will be disagreements between the two parties on thee economy ahead of an election, but they are not fatal and the two parties are both committed to reducing inequality, something he says was one of Tony Blair's biggest lacunae.

He also urged Labour to back the Liberal Democrat plan to take more of the low paid out of tax, but says he could see his former party backing the Labour idea of employer subsidies for the low paid as an additional policy response.

He also says that the two parties can work together on housing including the idea of building new towns on agricultural land, one of the most credible ways of sharply increasing housebuilding in the south east. He says the two parties are both committed to big programmes of social housebuilding.

He also suggests the two sides can see eye-to-eye on Europe with the two parties opposed to constant flip-flops and vetoes by David Cameron.

He suggests one of the greatest difficulties will come on crime where Blair resolved the debate between his liberal middle class and more authoritarian working class entirely in favour of the latter.

He also suggests the two sides could work together on a constitutional reform package including party funding reform, more powers for Scottish parliament primary elections and even proportional representation. He suggests at minimum the two sides could agree to hold a citizens' panel to discuss such issues.

The fundamental transition to a low carbon economy is another bridge to the Liberal Democrats, even if he says Miliband should find a way of ditching his commitment to an energy price freeze .