A taste of things to come

[abr1de]

This is what it will be like for the next year or so. Endless, secret talks while we all hang around waiting for them to let us know.

Democracy? Don't make me laugh. It's going to be endless horse-trading to appease a party that could never get elected on its own merits.

I almost hope that the coalition of losers goes ahead and everyone can see the horlicks they make of it. THey'll have to scrounge votes from every single tiny party around.

Yuck.

If I was DC I'd step back and watch the balls-up, whilst getting ready for another election soon.

'I'd rather have a minority Government under Gordon Brown backed up by the Tories on key votes'

At least there are some old-fashioned decent people there. D.Blunkett and J.Reid have my admiration for saying that this situation is dreadful. Kudos to them, unless they're taking some kind of stand re. the leadership election?

Yes, ajandjjmum, perhaps that would be best. What a situation.

Do you reckon they've dismantled all the polling booths yet? Maybe they should leave them be, and call another election for next Thursday!!

Heard Malcolm Riffkind this morning - he compared it to how Mugabe fixed an election that went against him.

If we have proportional representation EVERY election in future could be like this .

I think the Lib Dems are finished as a party if they throw their lot in with the losers in this election. They couldn't rise to the challenge. Perhaps Clegg and Laws should take the Tory whip and leave Cable and Hughes to be melded into Labour which is thier spiritual home anyway. Naked self interest - not a very edifying spectacle. When this is over and the stories come out - I'm betting only one party will emerge with any credit.

I know Jeff - it's surely going to harm the chances of people voting for PR in any future referendum?

The sabotaging of the Con Dem alliance has Mandelson's sticky fingerprints all over it. No-one but him could have got Brown to finally give up IMO, and Mandelson hasn't been elected by anyone!

I don't think that the Progressive Alliance is in any way sustainable - I agree with what David Blunkett said this morning. The country's massive debt is still the most urgent problem we are facing, and I think that the Con Dem option would be the best option to start sorting it out. The markets seem to want the Conservatives, and they would have Vince Cable on board for good measure.

Stewie - I don't think PR is working very well in Germany at the moment. Merkel's incredibly weak position has put the Euro at grave risk this last few weeks. PR was also one of the reasons that they ended up with Hitler too...

Interesting point; Hermann Goering gave evidence in his war crimes trial that, under the British system, the Nazis would have won every seat in the 1933 election.

I am appalled by the thought of a Lib/Lab/Green/Ulster unionist/every other tiny party pact.

I am a Labour supporter by instinct, but am horrified by Gordon Brown's "grasshopper who sang all summer" act and the thought of the country having to throw even more money at Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to hang on to an unstable coalition appalls me.

It would actually make me vote Tory when (as it will) it all collapses. I actually think that that might be the best thing for the Tories to do now. Step back and let that happen.

I also do not get this "ooh, well together the Labour party and the Lib Dems have more votes than the Convservatives " argument that keeps getting trotted out. Yes, but together the Lib Dems and Tories actually have a majority. And it is presumptive in the extreme to assume that Lib Dem voters would have Labour as their second choice. Barring nutters like the BNP, I would have voted for anyone before my local Labour MP, who spends his entire time on highly paid consultancies and is deeply dismissive of his constituents.

I'm appalled by what Campbell, Mandelson & Brown are doing. David Blunkett and John Reid are absolutely correct. I'd ask any Labour supporters who are in favour of this stitch-up going ahead what they would think if the Tories and Labour vote figures were switched and the Tories were the sitting government. You'd be appalled in that situation and rightly so. This is a massive, contemptuous two fingers in the face of democracy & the voting public.

Has it? Labour are pretty high up on the facist/authoritarian policy scale IMO.

The may not be right wing, but then most facist governments aren't.

Fascism has nothing to do with economic policy - the Nazi's were a National Socialist party!

I'd hope a lot of Labour supporters feel rather uneasy about this. Certainly on Facebook all the people on my friends list who were very vocal in their support pre-election have gone very, very quiet....

'and the thought of the country having to throw even more money at Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to hang on to an unstable coalition appalls me.'

Oh yes i forgot we don't pay anything into the collective pot, how dare we want any of it back.

That's not the point. The point is that countries other than England already take a far higher spend per head than England does from the public purse (I know the arguments about the difficulties of providing services to remote populations and equality of access, but it is still higher) and a number of the minority parties have made it pretty clear that the 'price' of their support in a minority coalition will be that their region sees fewer cuts than elsewhere. That isn't right and it isn't fair.