Caught Between the Devil You Know and the Deep Blue Sea.

The aftermath of the Cleggmania bubble bursting leaves Nick Clegg with a very tricky dilemma. He heads into negotiations hardly in a strong position, having a reduced number of seats (albeit on a raised number of votes). He basically has three options: (1) an agreement with the tories; (2) an agreement with Labour and others; (3) standing aside and letting the tories govern as a minority.

(1) An agreement with the tories. This is the only solution where the numbers really produce a stable government for the UK. There are certain areas of common ground where things could be achieved - scrapping ID cards, a compromise policy on education might be possible scrapping some of the tories less palatable ideas. I also think that genuine dialogue between the two parties on dealing with the deficit could lead to better solutions than the tories would produce by themselves and there's a chance we wouldn't get Osbourne as chancellor. But there's pressure from both sides. Clegg would need to get enough visible concessions to convince his own party and the electorate that the deal was worthwhile. Electoral reform will be the sticking point. Meanwhile Cameron is under pressure not to give too much away. The other consideration for Clegg is that if the tories do govern and make the cutbacks they believe are necessary to cut the deficit, the governor of the Bank of England's prediction may come true and they will be out of government again for a generation. Does Clegg want to tie his party to this?

(2) An agreement with Labour and others. This would give Clegg electoral reform, but you wonder how long any possible PM could hold together a coaltion or agreement between so many disparate elements and could well lead to another election this year (see below). I think its also true that on a personal level, Clegg has no love for Labour. Further there is the question of how well this would play with an English electorate who have largely rejected Labour, whereas in Scotland the lib-dems need to be finding grounds to oppose labour without supporting the tories.

Then there's the West Lothian question - such a broad centre-left alliance would be dependant on around 100 MPs from the devolved regions, legislating on a number of areas that are purely English concerns. I think that the tensions involved in that would bring the government down before the end of the year and we'd be looking at another election.

(3) Letting the tories govern as a minority. Has the advantage of not tying the Lib-dems to another party, both of whom might soon be seen as failures, but would also mean giving up on the chance of getting any of their agenda through. Furthermore it would hugely increase the chances of another election this year. Another election this year would be bad for Britain, prolonging the uncetainty around the economy. It would also probably be bad for the Lib-Dems, leading to an even greater squeeze on their vote and ther seats. At the very least it would be a huge gamble on Clegg's part to believe that they could come out of it well, and he would be open to accusations of putting party before country if the Lib-dems helped vote down a tory minority.

So, the challenge for Clegg is to try and deliver a deal which is first good for the stability and government of the country, whilst simultaneously getting enough out of it to convince his party and voters that it was worth it. If he can manage that it will be a truly statesmanlike performance.

Through gritted teeth, at the moment I am forced to admit that option 1 might be the best course at the moment, if there could be compromise on tax and education, genuine joint working on tackling the deficit and an agreement that Lib-Dems would be free to pursue electoral reform with the other parties with the tories free to oppose. This would very much depend on a disappointed and defeated Labour party's willingness to play ball. But if they didn't. it might not be in their interest either. Personally I can't see either Cameron or Brown being willing to make that work, but Brown's days are numbered. Whereas Cameron, with the tensions in his own party already starting to show, might need support from outside more than he currently realises.

Personally, at the moment, I wouldn't bet against another election later this year, with Labour under a new leader, producing an almost dead heat between the big two and very few seats for lib-Dems or others. Oh, and Scottish independance in about 10 years time.

What would make a workable Tory minority government?

The news that one bookmaker is paying out early on David Cameron being the next Prime Minister seems rather premature (and given the bookmaker in question's track record on earlty pay-outs, no great cause of concern for those on the left). What is becoming more and more likely is that the tories will be the largest party come May 7th. Despite some rather inaccurate reporting of marginal polls, none of the recent polls are yet indicating a tory majority (taking into account the Lib-Dems, SNP, other Scottish and seats where they are currently third a swing of nearly 9% would be needed in Labour-Tory marginals for that to happen as I have previously written about here). This raises a question of how many seats the tories would need to win to be able to form a minority government without support from the Lib-Dems, which Cameron is currently ruling out.

In order to become Prime Minister, Mr Cameron would need to get a vote for the Queens Speech passed in the House of Commons. The magic number for a majority is 326 votes. With Sinn Fein MPs traditionally (and no sign of this changing) not taking their seats in the chamber, this comes down to 322. So how could the tories get it lower.

SNP/Plaid Cymru - I can't honestly see either of these parties falling into line behind the tories. However, in return for greater devolved powers which the tories have been dangling over the last week I could envisage them being persuaded to abstain. Between the two parties you could be looking at 10-14 seats in the new parliament. Their abstention would therefore bring the total needed to win the vote down to 315.

Ulster Unionists of various kinds. The tories have a deal with the Ulster Unionist Party. Its very far from certain however that they will win any seats at all this time round. Their one MP left the party over the deal as she clearly favoured Brown to Cameron. She is likely to be re-elected and won't back the tories. The remaining ulster unionists will be made up of independants who might back the tories and the DUP. How they will respond and what price they would demand for their votes remains to be seen. At the very best for the tories this represents 10 votes (probably 6-8) which makes our magiv figure now 305 seats.

Of the rest - Labour, Lib-Dems, possibly Greens and independants (Wyre Forest, Blaenau Gwent and the possibility of an independant taking aq tory seat in Northampton South where the sitting MP hardly ever turns up to the house of commons anyway) its difficult to see where the tories would get any more votes or more than 1 or 2 abstentions. So any less than 305 seats and the tories are going to struggle to form a government. In that case they would need to persuade the Lib-Dems to abstain and even that might take a more conciliatory approach than they've adopted so far.

Even if they managed to win the vote to form a government, it remains to be seen if they could achieve much. I suspect we'd all be back at the polls again before the year was out.

And so they're off ....

And so the race is officially under way and with the polls suggesting a fairly close outcome, I though it would be a good time to share some thoughts in a purely speculative way about what might happen over the next month. In particular, to focus on the smaller parties and ask the question is this going to be a two-horse race and what are some of the factors that might come into play.

The Big Squeeze
What happened in the last Scottish election was that a close race between Labour and the SNP resulted in a big squeeze of the vote for the smaller parties who lost seats as a result. Theoretically we face a similar situatuion here with the possibility of a close race and ahung parliament at the end of it. There is evidence (although not overwhelming) in the opinion polls that this is already happening and the Lib-Dem vote is already under pressure, let alone the smaller parties. It will undoubtedly be a factor, but it will be interesting to see how other factors come into play with it.

A Hung Parliament
If it still looks like being a hung parliament closer to election day, what effect does that. It could play further into the squeeze, pushing more people towards either Tory or Labour or it could play the other way as people realise that the smaller parties could end holding the balance of power. One key could be how far the tories are off an overall majority. Even on a bad day for them the Lib Dems will hold over 40 seats, which would give them a powerful say in most cases. However, if the tories are only a few seats away from a majority, they might not need them. In particular, there is one group of parties that won't be affected by any squeeze - the Northern Irish parties (neither labour nor conservative are fielding any candidates here). Anybody fancy a conservative government propped up by the DUP?

Personally I think that a hung parliament might be the best outcome for the country. I don't think any one party has the vision to get us out of our current situation and a result that forced the parties into collaborative working for the good of the country might generate the creative tension needed to actually make a difference.

TV Debates The one thing nobody can really predict is how much impact the televised debates between the three leaders will have as its never happened before in this country. The conservatives will doubtless fancy Cameron's chances to do well against Brown, but paradoxically I reckon they have the least to gain and most to lose from the debates: they are already ahead in the polls and Cameron will have high expectations to live up to. From the times I've seen him on Prime Minister's Questions, I'm not totally convinced Cameron is quite as good or charismatic a debater as is made out. At times he can be too keen to put his opponent down with a telling sound bite and can come across as a strange mix of smug and desperate. On the other hand, Gordon Brown will go into the debates with very low expectations on him and even a halfway decent performance could be seen as a success. Nick Clegg probably has the most to gain - he will go in with the lowest public profile, but as young leader with the intelligence and charisma to at least live with the other two, he could really come out well. Whether this would be enough to counter the effects of the squeeze remain to be seen.

Regional and Constituency Variations
Polls are not always reliable and most of the current predictions on the number of seats that will be won are based on the assumption of fairly uniform swings across the country (Polls based olely in marginal constituencies give a better, but still not wholly accurate picture). What happened at the last election was a huge amount of varition between regions. For example there were disproportionately large swings to the tories in North East seats where they were never going to win and very small swings in seats they were actually challenging in. Similarly, the Lib-Dems picked up lots of votes in areas like Glasgow where they were traditionally weak in what was seen as a warning tom Labour. This provides a slightly distorted starting point from which to measure a swing, even if we don't see a similar level of variation this time round. Another factor will be, on a consituency by constituency basis, how much impact it has where the previous MP was tainted by the expenses scandal - it might, just might, throw up some very odd results. And then there's also the fact that a traditional Lib-Dem strength has been in local organistion in constituencies they either hold or think they're in with a chance of gaining. They seem a wee bit better at this than the other parties and work those consituencies very hard. Whilst I don't think this means they will hold off the tories in every consituency where they are being challenged (especially in South West England), they might hang on to a few that national trends would suggest they'd lose and maybe gain a few from Labour that you wouldn't expect.

Pro-Tory or Anti-Labour?
What is not clear from the polls is how much of the conservative support is actually pro-tory and how much is anti-labour. The 97 election saw a large tactical "Anyone but Tory" vote, which has been a factor to a lesser degree ever since. There is still undoubtedly some of that sentiment around, now joined by a similar "Anyone but Labour" feeling. If a significant number of those saying they will vote Tory are actually "Anyone but Labour" voters, this could actually be exploited by other parties for a tactical vote. It would take a careful balancing act by the Lib Dems to simultaneously appeal to both anti-tory and anti-labour voters, but possible if they manage to present themselves as genuine third option. Similarly there is a balance between trying to appear different from the other two parties with their expenses scandals, etc... in order to appeal to those disenchanted from mainstream politics whilst maintaining a credibility as real challengers.

What About the Nationalists?
(I've yet to see any Welsh based polls, so will focus mainly on Scotland here). Since the advent of devolved parliaments, the trend has been for the nationalists to do well in the elections for their respective parliament, only for the vote to fall at the general election. That said, the SNP did very badly at the last general election and you would expect their vote to rise from that level. They have the aim of increasing from 7 to 20 MPs - that's just not going to happen with the squeeze and the Holyrood government not riding high in popularity. On the plus side for them I would expect at least 5 of their current seats to be fairly safe from the squeeze. So you could end up with the Scottish picture where the SNP increase their vote, but lose 2 seats, but the Lib-Dem vote falls (notably in the Labour heartlands where they polled unexpectedly well last time), but they actually pick up seats if a few key constitiencies go their way (Edinburgh South, Aberdeen South and on a really good night for them Edinburgh North and Leith).

And the rest?
The Greens main target will be Brighton Pavillion where they polled a respectable 20% last time round. They'll be hoping to increase that. Its a Labour seat, so with a strong anti-Labour vote there could be a real upset, but that's highly unlikely.

The BNP's Nick Griffin is sitting on 15% in Barking. Again, he's unlikely to take the seat on a good turnout, but it would be so nice to see his share of the vote go down.

UKIP's leader, Nigel Farrage, is the sole challenger to Commons Speaker John Bercow in Buckingham. Again, he's unlikely to win but both are amongst the most eccentric and outspoken figures in British Politics, so the hustings there should be worth the price of admission.


I'll hopefully write more about the tories and labour as the campaign goes on, but I'm personally hoping that this isn't a two horse race, but one with more variation and colour across the country, because I believe thats what we need both to get people re-engaged with politics and to find more creative solutions to our problems.