A way Ahead

This blog has kept neutral throughout this election campaign. Most of its analysis has been born out by events. This is how things now stand.

Arithmetically in terms of seats a Con/Lib coalition looks sound and has a good majority, so, the argument goes, it would be stable and would offer strong government. This may be quite wrong. The Tory party sings form a quite different hymn sheet to the Lib Dems. The old Liberal party was ideologically close to the old Conservative party in the post WWII period. Both were anti socialist. Post Thatcher and post the SDP and the amalgamation with the Liberals to form the the current party, the Lib Dems are a progressive party of the left. They sing from the same ideological hymn sheet as Labour,the Nationalist parties and even the DUP, which though unionist, has working class roots and left of centre domestic policies. 

Therefore a Cabinet in which the likes of Redwood and Davis and Howard, brought in by Cameron to appease the Right, sit alongside the pro Europe Clarke, together with Huhne, Cable and Clegg has huge instability, not just within itself but in the various groupings of backbenchers making up what will then become the Con/Lib governing coalition. It may have a big majority in the Commons but it will be badly split within itself. Pressure from those groups (pro and anti Europe, cut now or later, voting reform or no) cannot allow government other than by perpetual compromise or fudge. The arithmetic is in its favour, but the maths are against it.

The maths are these. The Tories have 10.7 million votes (Thatcher always polled over 13 million and Major achieved 14 million). The progressive parties described above of which a Lab/Lib coalition would be built have a popular vote totalling 16.6 million. This shows why the issue of votes/seats is at the heart of the constitutional difficulties.

A coalition based on this huge electoral majority in terms of votes, which do have value in a proper democracy, would not be as unstable in the Commons as some try to portray. This is because though there may be arguments over detail, all agreee on the fundamentals. With the Con/Lib version they make a deal on the details, but disagree on the fundamentals. Your imagination can do the rest. 

The Con/Lib coalition is likely to become, as the Governor of the bank said, the most unpoular in modern times. It is doubtful whether there will even be a referendum on voting reform. Without it at the next election, the Lib Dems, as handmaidens to the perpetrators of the horrors of what is to come, will face oblivion. Labour, rebuilt by a new leader, will sweep back to power as the Progressive salvation to which all the 16 million will flock.

The Lab/Con coalition will push through electoral reform which will mean that, even if a new election is forced upon them, the likely outcome will be the progressive parties still get the most votes and the Lib/Dems will get the parliamentary status their voting tally warrants.They will live on as part of the core political structure of a reivgorated democracy.

By the end of today we shall know where we are headed and the Lib Dems will know wheter they have a long term future. If the Tories go into opposition they wil know that if they can force an election before voting reform a handful of gains will give them a majority.  After reform and the prize of government will be out of their reach for a very long time indeed.