Another unelected labour PM

[voteanythingbutBNPplease]

Gordon brown resigns.
So if LIb dems do deal with labour - ANOTHER unelected PM.

hmmm

Just a thought - Harriet Harman or David Milliband could be PM - what a joke.

William Hague is desperate isn't he

god, I wonder if he's got the backing of his parties for this. I bet he hasn't.

It's panic

Yes true Aussie, obv. nobody put an x by 'Hung Parliament'. But the public, broadly, was enthusiastic about the idea. I reckon we just wanted to torture 'em for a bit. Agree everybody thought LD vote would be much higher.

it was only today that I had a lightbulb moment - radio was on and suddenly William Hague came on talking about the negotiations. I suddenly realised...... Jesus! It's them, isn't it??? Its the same old Tory party. I'd forgotten about William Hague and what a twat he was

Or maybe Balls will end up being PM, but with a majority of just over 1000, it may be a short tenure even if labour won again.

Interesting bourbon - but would a referendum outcome need to go to a HoC vote?

Nice ven diagram amicissima.

"William Hague is desperate isn't he"

What is he doing?

Lal - today so far I have seen /heard - Douglas Hurd, John Major, Lord Baker and only Michael Heseltine and Michael Howard

Where have they been keeping them? WHY are they being wheeled out now? What does it MEAN?

stressed - he's rushing out onto the pavement and saying that he will be offering the LD's a referendum on AV.

oh dear....is forming the next government so important to them all. I can't help feeling that AV would be a terrible mistake for all of them including the lib dems. No one would ever get anything done.

AV bad. Bad bad bad.

Agree Aussieng. It's ridiculous to say people voted for a hung parliament, it's simply not possible. How could you attempt to get that result without knowing who everyone else was going to vote for?

Also, in response to policywonk's comment "A minority Tory government would have no true democratic legitimacy; 64% didn't want it", Labour's share of the UK vote in 2005 was 35.3%. So in 2005, when Labour won the election, 64.7% of the population didn't want them to.

Share of national vote for Labour in 2005= 35.3%

Share of national vote for Tories in 2010= 36.1%

So why do you think that Labour got the mandate with a lower share of the vote than the Tories got in this election, when you say the Tories shouldn't have it?

Even in the 1997 Labour landslide, the winning party only got 43.2% of the vote. So more than half the population didn't want them.

This year Labour got 29% of the vote, which is not far off their low point of 1983 when they got 27%.

So if your argument is that the Tories don't have a current mandate to rule, the same has to be said of almost every government in history and certainly doesn't support Labour being in power.

Not a Tory btw, can't decide which is the best of a bad lot.

Yes I just saw Hurd. Can never see him without remembering that Spitting Image puppet with the ice-cream head.

I guess all the parties are having to wheel out the grandees because the current generation are behind closed doors biting each other's legs off.

Challenging, I absolutely agree that those previous administrations didn't have proper democratic mandates either. FPTP has always been a desperately unfair, distorted system. But even within this unbelievably crappy system, the Tories have not won this election. The only way you win is by getting a majority, and they haven't.

The broader point about democratic mandates was in answer to those who were implying that a LibLab pact (representing more than 50% of the population) would somehow be an undemocratic outcome - patently untrue. (Just as a LibCon pact would be resoundingly democractic.)

We'll have to agree to disagree on the hung parliament point. Seems pretty clear to me from the pre-election polls that it's exactly what the country wanted.

Yep, there's not a real politician available to comment.

I guess if they wheel out doddery ones and they say the wrong thing it's less of a monumental fuck-up than if someone who matters says it.

Lol, PW!
I remember the cone head peeing in the urinal next to Maggie!

yes - lik the Venn diagram..

actually i think the Mumsnetters in general seem to be very liberal (small L) in sympathy , and more so than the general public. Therfore it isn't suprising that Labour MNers think Libdems have more in common with them, whilst Conservative MNers don't see it (viewing their own parties more liberal aspects..)

In a way its all cloud cuckooland - the Major government had a better majority than such a coalition...

This looks a lot like an attempt to gain more leverage in the negotiations with the Conservatives....but lets see.

In a way I win either way - either i get labour tempered by Liberals (so, they can stick their ID cards where they belong)
or conservative tempered by liberals (so, I am guaranteed my civil rights wish list, and possibly the end oftuition fees with it?)

Labour seem to have ssuddenly noticed they have a defecit to addess one wonders how it can have escaped GB's notice all this time...

I must admit i really couldn't care less about electoral reform. I expect a reasonable portion of the population feels the same - otherwise they'd have voted LibDem!

Humbug,yes I was respo nding to policywonks comment about Labour being able to get a majority for PR.

Policywonk any legislation resulting from the result of a referendum will of course have to go through the Hof C but if the country has voted for it in a referndum it would be difficult for the Hof C to vote against.the legislation to get a referendum will of course have to go through the Hof C as well,and don't forget the house of Lords but as Tory plus Lib will have a majority this is realistically deliverable,but will of course cost money,I have heard estimates of £80 million just to run the referndum

Prime Ministers aren't elected mp's are. The leader of that party by default becomes the pm.

IsVeryTiredOfThisLineTiggaxx

Thanks bourbon.

So does anyone know - if there were to be a referendum on AV, and it was in favour of AV, but there was then an election called before it got through the lords, could the referendum result then be ignored?

I think this is a good time to recommend my policy of taking the lot of these parasites out in the street and offing them like dogs.

Because ordinary people can and one day will run the country better than these murderers and self serving sociopaths.*

Aren't they all really scummy awful people.

*try saying self serving sociopaths after a couple of G&Ts...

Sometimes when you get an outcome you want (e.g. a hung parliament) you're lucky. You were not able to do anything to influence it. The fact that you wanted it doesn't mean you had any control over whether you got it.

Voters may have wanted a hung parliament but they could only vote for which party was represented in their constituency. It would take a hell of a lot of organisation to actively vote for a hung parliament.

They shouldn't have wanted a hung parliament anyway! Look what a fine mess the voters have gotten us in to (or would have, if they had had any control over it )

Anyway re the OP, obviously we don't vote for the PM. But our opinion of the party and our decision about whether to vote for them or not may well be based on the performance of its leader. Luckily I think Gordon was pants so I didn't vote for him or therefore his party anyway!

Say we do get a referendum on AV

Naturally there will be no time to organise it within the first year, because the economy needs putting straight

The second year will be pretty busy too

Then there will be lots of arguments over the form of PR in various committees. That'll take a decade or so

Then eventually we'll have a referendum

And then it will not go through the commons on the turkeys for christmas basis

So another couple of parliaments will slip by and eventually it gets through the commons

Then it gets bogged down in ctee. But after another decade or so it gets to the Lords

Goes back to the commons. Twice

Eventually, my unborn great-grandchildren will get PR

And anyone trusting the Tories on this issue would need certifying