I Got it wrong.

The danger of writing political comment is that you can get it spectacularly wrong. Last night certainly didn't run like I would have hoped. There were a few rays of light - the first ever Green MP at Westminister is a cause for rejoicing and in a hung parliament, I'm convinced that she'll be a credit to the institution. Similarly a victory for the non sectarian Alliance in Northern Ireland (also their first MP) is welcome. A reduction in Nick Griffen's share of the vote for the BNP was also nice to see, whilst the result in Redcar was possibly the most sensational of the night and gave a brief lift to my faith in democracy.

The rest of the picture was rather mixed - there were highs and lows but all in all rather a confusing picture. The tories will fall short of a majority, but they have the overwhelming majority of English seats. I think that is the biggest problem I would have to the idea of a Lib-Lab coalition trying to rule - they would ruling based largely on Scottish and Welsh MPs but deciding on policy for issues that are devolved. Much though I dislike the Conservatives and their policies, to me that seems an untenable position.

I had expected there to be some squeeze and some turning back to the big two parties. I hadn't expected it to be quite as marked as it was. That said it should be pointed out that they did actually increase their vote. They just lost seats and not even necessarily where you'd expect. In the South West they would have been expected to struggle more in Somerset seats they managed to hold and even take from the Tories, whilst losing supposedly safer seats in Cornwall and Devon. Failures to capture Durham and Blaydon were disappointing and then they pull a complete rabbit out of the hat with Redcar.

Other than the squeeze, what went wrong? Was it the Ashcroft millions? The Tory-biased press? They maybe played a part. I wonder of there wasn't something else though. I think that the Lib-dems themselves got too sucked up into Clegg-mania, got too caught up in trying to fight the campaign at a national level at the expense of some of the strong local campaigns that have traditionally been their strength. I don't know, just a tentative theory.

So, what next? As I've said, I think a Lib-Lab pact would raise far too many constitutional issues along West lothia question lines. I suspect that Clegg will let Cameron try to govern as a minority. We'll see how effective that is. There is one interesting possibility with a minority government. Clegg could let the tories govern, but still try to push through a vote on electoral reform. If they could agree with Labour on the format of that electoral reform, there would probably be support from Caroline Lucas, SNP and Plaid Cymru - that might be enough to get something passed. OK, that may be wishful thinking, but leave me one ray of hope.