Chris Brooke: A hung parliament wouldn't leave Nick Clegg in the driving seat
[Chris Brooke teaches politics at Cambridge University and blogs at the Virtual Stoa]
Obviously, it's the Lib Dems that have made this election both interesting and enjoyable. If it were just a straight Labour-Conservative fight, then we'd be seeing the formation of a Conservative government with a large majority, and to the extent that that outcome is not really on the cards, we the (substantial majority of the) people have good reason to be grateful to the Liberal Democrats.
That said, I'm finding it hard to see how the party will be able to do well out of the parliamentary shenanigans that are likely to follow. In the first place, there are the kinds of considerations laid out in this post from Brian Barder, which walk us through what the apparently agreed constitutional sequence of events is going to be in the event of a hung parliament.
Now, I'm not so concerned about this kind of thing, as I think Gordon Brown is likely to quit fairly promptly in the event of a heavy defeat, for the inter-related reasons of not wanting to come across like Ted Heath after February 1974, and not wanting to doom Labour to an even worse defeat in a second general election, having visibly tried and failed to hold on to power after coming in third. But until he quits, the political initiative rests with him; and as soon as he quits, it passes over to David Cameron. People write as if it's the choices that Clegg makes that will prove decisive after Thursday; but he'll only ever be reacting to agenda set by others, and "screwing over the Lib Dems" will always be pretty high on those agenda.
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
Obviously, it's the Lib Dems that have made this election both interesting and enjoyable. If it were just a straight Labour-Conservative fight, then we'd be seeing the formation of a Conservative government with a large majority, and to the extent that that outcome is not really on the cards, we the (substantial majority of the) people have good reason to be grateful to the Liberal Democrats.
That said, I'm finding it hard to see how the party will be able to do well out of the parliamentary shenanigans that are likely to follow. In the first place, there are the kinds of considerations laid out in this post from Brian Barder, which walk us through what the apparently agreed constitutional sequence of events is going to be in the event of a hung parliament.
Now, I'm not so concerned about this kind of thing, as I think Gordon Brown is likely to quit fairly promptly in the event of a heavy defeat, for the inter-related reasons of not wanting to come across like Ted Heath after February 1974, and not wanting to doom Labour to an even worse defeat in a second general election, having visibly tried and failed to hold on to power after coming in third. But until he quits, the political initiative rests with him; and as soon as he quits, it passes over to David Cameron. People write as if it's the choices that Clegg makes that will prove decisive after Thursday; but he'll only ever be reacting to agenda set by others, and "screwing over the Lib Dems" will always be pretty high on those agenda.