Election Madness

Here's an attempt to make sense of the seeming madness that happened last night and carries on today, it's a strange old result. This could well carry on for weeks before we're certain about what's going to happen but this is how it looks at the moment.

With only a few seats left to come in we have a hung parliament, no-one has enough seats to lead a majority government, but the Tory's have come closest. Now it's time for them all to work out who can put together the most stable government. Obviously, it was a good night for the Conservative's, but not nearly as good as they would have liked or perhaps even should have done. Within recent times they had over a 20% lead and yet they can't even win the election after 13 years in opposition and a massive financial crisis. Clearly people aren't over enthused about David Cameron and his party. Labour had a very bad night but they're still in with a big role in government which they might not have expected. Maybe the biggest news of the night was the very strange story of the Lib Dem's. They did appallingly compared to the high hopes that they had and everyone was expecting for them, yet they still have a lot of power in deciding the PM. So, who will work with who?

The easiest way for either Labour or Conservative to get power would be to woo Nick Clegg, if they can give him enough then they might be able to form a coalition or at least have a working majority with Lib Dem support. Brown has already said that he will give way on voting reform and that they agree on many areas including the speed of cuts. Cameron has made an offer on some areas but more importantly, he left out major Lib Dem demands, no budge on the EU, defence, the speed of cuts or voting reform.

So this is what I think will happen, let's see how much I get right over the next few weeks. David Cameron will be the next PM, he'll have a minority government that just has a confidence and supply agreement with Clegg. (That means that the Lib Dem's will vote with Tory's to get Cameron as PM and on budgets but won't guarantee any other support) Brown will resign and be replaced as leader by David Miliband.

This isn't what I hope happens, I like Brown, I think people greatly underestimate him and I was hoping for a Lib-Lab pact but it doesn't look like Lib Dem's did well enough to make it stable enough. I can only hope that the time in opposition makes Labour come back stronger and people will realise just what a disastrous mistake they made in voting for Tory austerity. I also wouldn't be at all surprised to see Cameron call a new general election before the end of 2011, by that time maybe people will have got bored of his slick salesman approach to governing with no real substance. Feel free to mock my opinion and give me yours :)

P.s. You've got love Jeremy Vine's numerous cool gadgets on the BBC.