I genuinely think we could have a hung parliment.

Guy Fawkes - the only guy who entered Parliament with honest intentions

keep a spare lampost for dave and ozzy will you?

bout time they were all hung its overdue

ozzy can hang himself, cable would make a far better chancellor

Hung would be too good for some

the old lib lab pact stikes again-what a joyful fudge-the IMF will be here in 6 months.

more likely to be a con LD pact, clegg is an ex tory dont forget

But Vince is ex-Labour.

The Lib Dems have hankered after a hung parliament for years, but there's a chance (admittedly small) that it might rip them apart.

Be careful what you wish for...

LDs have already openly said they will support the party with the biggest mandate from the electorate

no automatic Lib/Lab pact any more, especially since most sensible liberal-minded people despise Labours autocratic, control-freakish nanny state instincts, spin, illegal wars, etc

Hung parliament will be awful for Britain, would rather have 5 more years of Labour. Completely undemocratic that the party with the least number of votes can play kingmaker and therefore be in a position that is far more powerful than their votes entitle them to be. We will then be subjected to watered down consensus based nonsense, until government breaks down totally and we have to have another election. On a positive note, it will at least expose the inherent flaws of the PR voting system that always leads to coalition governments.

If we do get a hung parliament, I'd be shocked if the Lib Dems went into any formal coalition with either party. What Clegg said was that democracy dictates that the party with the most votes gets to form the government - therefore ending any speculation that the LDs would prop up Labour if they end up with less votes but more seats (not an impossible scenario by any means).

What we would more than likely see is a minority Tory govt, just as there is a minority SNP government in Scotland. It might actually help Cameron, if he has to build consensus for each bill, rather than deal with stroppy Tory backbenchers.

Interesting stuff though.

Golf, i remember Hattersley writing about the Lib/Lab pact in the 70s and the problems facing a hung parliament, in his piece he stated that in reality little could get done and consensus ended up being reduced to horsetrading with some dubious independents.

IMO, the country will lead a strong government in the next few years and i cant see a hung parliament providing that, in fact the only thing it will produce is another General Election within two years.

I'm losing interest anyway, labour are useless and in complete denial, Cameron is far too soft. Its like we're all on death row subject to appeal.

zilzal - I've never bought the idea that you need a majority to have 'strong govt'. Virtually every country in Europe has PR and coalitions, yet tend to fare at least as well as us. Salmond's govt hasn't been destroyed by its lack of a majority either.

Imo, a hung parliament would at last reflect the mood of the electorate and move our politics forward. We are not a 2-party country anymore, and within both Labour and Tory parties there is a substantial minority that are ignored by the leadership.

The perfect result would be Brown to win by about 30 seats. Give it 18 months his governemnt would collapse given all the big cuts he would make in complete contrast to his pledges. In an ideal world Cameron would have resigned after the loss and a new leader would be able to take over and take the decisions needed once a sense of reality had reached the majority of the people.

Thats the electoral system though Golf.

Under PR we might get some unpalatable minority groups who may end up holding the balance of power-When ever, except in rare cases of civil unrest, did the Government listen to the wishes of the people anyway, we are imo, a very fragmented country.

Zilzal - the point is that, in a hung parliament, there must be a greater chance than ever of a change in the electoral system.

I don't fear extremists, as Britain has a long history of rejecting such groups. And even if, say the BNP, got three seats and 8%, I am certain the other parties would lock them out.

Actually, our electoral system does ensure the govt 'listens to the people'. The problem is that the people they listen to are a disproportionately politically clueless bunch of swing voters in marginal seats. Its easy to condemn them for relying on focus groups with these people, but given the electoral system it would be a betrayal of their own parties to do otherwise.

I dont know about that Golf

If you look back at the depression in the 30s you would see large amounts of civil unrest, groups of both political classes on the extremes growing then, in fact if it wasnt for the second world war who knows what might have happened.
Think it all depends on the economic situation, if it declines further than the economists believe we, as a nation , could be in unchartered waters, it may have to be a time for change, in what direction, who knows. I dont believe that our current economic institutions can stand for much longer in their current form.

if we default before march, what will the impact be on the election... any opinions??

zilzal, fair point that we don't know where we're heading, but imo PR is the best defence against extremism. This is precisely why so many countries adopted it after PR - had consensual govt been an imperative, the likes of Hitler and Mussolini would never have got anywhere.

Imo, give us PR and you will see a vastly changed political scene. Tories and Labour would probably split - as would make sense philosophically. All sorts of votes that are currently made 'on a negative' for the 3 main parties, could well drift off to alternatives. We would surely see the emergence of new parties, perhaps more reflective of the society than the ones we have now which are based on a society that hasn't existed for several decades.

The Balkanisation of the UK perchance??

There are areas of the UK whos ideas are so far apart from others that it seems a different country. Would we go, like Italy to general elections every couple of years

I don't see any reason why we should emulate Italy, who have never had stable govt and rarely at best ever had a shared idea of nationhood, rather than Germany, Sweden, Australia or any of the many other stable, successful countries with PR.

Balkanisation, (though the word is hyperbolic because there is virtually no chance of violence), is already happening, and will continue under the Tory and LD's forthcoming localism plans. Equally, it is easy to imagine a scenario where Scotland, Wales and NI remain members of the EU, whereas an independent England goes it alone.

Australia has State governments though, having lived in Both Sydney and Perth, i can assure you that they are vastly different in Culture.

Mainland Northern Europeans have a different mindset to us in a lot of areas, i would say that they are far more **geneous than we are in the UK. Who knows if PR would work here or not?

We, on a forum , can only surmise what will happen. IMO i can only see a far more Authoritarian Britain than even the one we reside in now.

I can't see why that would be zilzal. If parties are made to work together, it is their extreme stuff that gets knocked off in the process. And there is nothing uniquely British that I can fathom, that leads us to needing an unrepresentative electoral system.

you forgotten the house of lords sibs

I would very much welcome an elected House of Lords, and cannot for the life of me understand why Labour refused to create one.

Cash for peerages (nap).

Lets make it entirely elected, and then elect a raft of local, independent candidates to scrutinise legislation with reference to the effect on their own area.

Sib, dont know how the seats would be measured on a PR basis using the last General and Council elections. Now, you may argue that Council ones are different because all and sundry switch in a general election because voting is different, but , it wouldnt be then.

How many seats would UKIP, Greens, BNP have based on the Council Elections??

Would you not then get a Alliance of the right wing parties arguing about a withdrawal from Europe??, indeed they maybe supported on that issue by extreme left wing groups as well

The irony is, the original House of Lords worked better than the current carve up; there was no cash for peerages then. Labour have truly f*cked up this part of their reform.

Would you not then get a Alliance of the right wing parties arguing about a withdrawal from Europe??, indeed they maybe supported on that issue by extreme left wing groups as well

Well, firstly I can't imagine UKIP or NotoEU abiding any relationship with the BNP. But if the rest clubbed together, so what? The whole point about the EU issue is that it bubbles underneath the surface without the proper debate being had, or the proper mandate being gained.

those arguing that we are not heading into a more authortarian state are surely kidding themselves. it becomes more and more obvious as each day goes by imo

Agree Don, the Former Eastern Bloc states would have had a wet dream at the amount of Cameras, Forms, and controls we have here now.

Even getting Kids to inform on their own parents, it seems a trait to "Catch em young" in these kind of Governments

cue music - Runaway Train, by Soul Asylum.