(In the event of a Hung Parliament, The Queen says: 'All right, boys- there's two bullets in this gun and three of you. Whichever one of you is left standing gets to form a new government. So play nice and give me a sensible coalition, please?' And seriously- is it me, or does this old lady really look like Her Majesty?)
Well, the wheels have not come off the Clegg Bandwagon- at least not yet. And despite heavy attacks from both Labour and the Tories, the polls show that this race is still firmly a three-horse race raising the possibility of a hung parliament with every passing day. The impact of the debates cannot be understated in this case: Clegg made a splash with the first debate and managed a credible, competent performance in the second (even if some people did give the edge to David Cameron, who looked and sounded much better) and the poll numbers still haven't really budged too much.
With one more debate this Thursday, the opportunities for game-changing moments for all three parties are running out quickly. Barring some kind of massive gaffe or previously unforeseen scandal emerging in the last couple of weeks of campaigning, I'm going to say a hung parliament is all but a certainty. The question is: what happens then? The Liberal Democrats seem to be keeping all options open, but certainly their fondest wish and dream has been reforming the voting system (as well as the political system to some larger degree) so you can bet, if the added clout of the polls right now translates into added seats, they will be demanding, at minimum, voting reform as a price for their participation in any coalition.
Ideologically, their closest allies are Labour. In the early to mid-90s, Paddy Ashdown, head of the LDP positioned his party further to the left, with the idea of an unspoken partnership with Labour to keep the Tories out of power. However, the downside to a Lib-Lab Coalition is that it'll probably keep Gordon Brown in power as Prime Minister and I'm not entirely sure how much patience the British electorate is going to have with keeping Gordo around. Whether the Lib Dems could demand Brown's head AND voting reform as prices for their participation in a coalition is a dicey prospect at best. I would bet they would go for the former and swallow (with noses held) the latter.
There's another bit of mathematics to consider and that's the role of independent and smaller parties in the event of a hung parliament. Currently, per the Election Seat Calculator- and the polls as of this morning on the Beeb, we get a breakdown of seats like this:
Conservatives: 244 (seats)
Labour: 276
Liberal Democrats: 101
Others: 29
The magic number the parties need to get to is 326. So as of today, the Conservatives are projected to be 82 seats short, Labour 50 seats short and the Liberal Democrats a whopping 225 seats short of an absolute majority. If the assorted collection of smaller parties breaks down in a similar way to the current Parliament, we could see negligible gains in seats for any of the major parties. Subtract the Speaker of the Commons and his 3 deputies (who are supposed to be apolitical and normally don't vote), subtract 5 seats held by Sinn Fein (that number could change) who don't take their seats in Parliament because it involves swearing fealty to the Queen, something they're for sure not hip too.
So now we're down to 20 seats of the 'other' variety- which even if they broke one way or the other, the seat totals currently aren't close enough for them to make a difference in getting a governing coalition together. In a pinch, if things were projected to be tighter, the Tories might be able to rely on the Democratic Unionists (Protestant Party) from Northern Ireland, but they shouldn't have more than 10 seats, so the race would really have to tighten for them to be a factor. Similarly, Plaid Cymuru and the SNP (Welsh and Scottish Nationalists, respectively) would probably draw similar numbers and as they have more power to play with in Edinburgh and Cardiff, I'm not sure they'd be eager about a governing coalition in London. Rather, they might thumb their noses, have a beer and watch London flail around a bit. So, either way- discount the other parties. The LibDems, if these numbers hold up, will hold the balance of power in Parliament.
Anyway, the mathematics aside, we've got the last debate Thursday and today there seems to be nothing of great import other than the three parties in a tussle on the issues of family and crime.
The Latest Polls:
Conservatives: 33%
Labour: 28%
Liberal Democrats: 30%
Others: 9%
Getting ready for the home stretch! It's going to be a bumpy ride...
No comments:
Post a Comment