A win for democracy?

I have to admit, I didn't see this one coming. Bizarrely, the exit poll (which assumed uniform swings across the country; something we didn't see at all) gave a much better indication of the final seat distribution that all the opinion polls did.

But who won? Well maybe, just maybe, we (the electorate) did.

An obvious statement first: it seems we, as a nation, did not want to adopt wholesale the policies of any single party. There were lots of warning about what would happen in these circumstances, but at least at the moment, the answer seems to be that politicians will behave in a mature, grown-up way. This may come as a shock to some people.

The people in the most awkward position when the result became clear were the Liberal Democrats. Things didn't go very well for them in terms of results: they lost seats (although their vote share rise). But, they hold the balance of power. They have continually said that whoeever got the most seats and the most votes had the right to govern, but the Tories have little in common in many areas with the Lib Dems, making it hard for the two to work together. On the other hand, they could back up a Labour attempt to govern, but as Labour lost on both seats and votes this would probably be seen both as undemocratic, and as a confirmation of the Tory warning "Vote Clegg, get Brown."

But, full credit to Clegg, he stuck to his guns and said that, in his opinion, the Tories have the right to try to govern. Brown "respected" that decision, but made his pitch to the Lib Dems. And all eyes were on David Cameron. Would he try to make a coalition with the Lib Dems? Is it even possible given the differences between the parties? In fact, this is a bit of a dry-run for PR, cynics could argue (maybe justly) that PR would fail simply because Labour and the Lib Dems are too similar, so would always join arguing that people voted for "progressive left" policies, leaving the Tories out in the cold.

Fortunately, Cameron made a speech which showed that those statements that politicians need to "grow up" were far too patronising. He acknowledged the differences they have with the Lib Dems, highlighted some areas on which he would not compromise (none of which were the Lib Dem "headline" policies), highlighted some areas on which they would compromise (including some Lib Dem headlines) and skirted around some of the areas (like when to cut) where clearly there is room to manoeuvre. Surely this is the whole point of consensus politics? This is how PR should work if we switch to it. It opens the possibility that two fairly different parties can respond to the will of the electorate by compromise and consensus to produce a legislative agenda which reflects the will of the electorate rather than the will of the biggest party (with <50% of the votes).

In short, if things pan out as they are looking like doing, democracy won.

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Disclaimer: I am no political expert and I'm over tired, and these are early days, so I may end up issuing a post in a few days saying how awful everything is and why can't a coalition form!

On other notes: why are the BBC still putting "BREAKING NEWS" above the line "No party has overall majority." It's BROKEN news, it broke hours ago!

Also, before the election the Tories issued many warnings about the dangers of a Hung Parliament. Now they've got to reassure the City that a coalition Government can bring stability and does not endager the recovery after all.

The General Election: Abandon logic, all ye who enter here?

I'm increasingly puzzled by a feature of the election leaflets which are being fed through my letterbox with increasing urgency. My local constituency, Watford, is held by the unremarkable junior Justice Minister, Claire Ward, but there were only 1,941 votes between her and the third-placed candidate, Tory Ali Miraj, in 2005, with the Liberal Democrats coming in second. So Watford is a three-way marginal, no question about it.

Yet every time I get a leaflet the parties seem to spend a great deal of space exhorting me to remember that "It's a straight fight between this party and that party - the other party is out."

Now, I understand that PR value of avoiding a split in the vote, but isn't anybody on their teams checking that what they are saying makes any sense before they post these leaflets out?

It's one thing to say "if you vote X, you may split the vote and Y will get in, so vote for Z", but I am sorry to see our three main candidates stuffing their literature with such illogical  non-sequiturs as "Because the Conservatives have only four out of forty local council seats, they can't win the Watford parliamentary constituency" and "Only by electing Richard Harrington can you make sure David Cameron forms a government on 7 May".

Listen up: your electorate is not stupid. Just tell us what you want us to do and let us agree or disagree with you.

What's wrong with "If you don't want Claire Ward to get in, vote for Sal Brinton"? Or "Polls show we're ahead - but we need every vote we can get, so please stick with the
Conservatives"? Aren't these messages both simple, and not stupid?

No wonder people get confused about politics. Even our candidates are telling voters that the result of the last county council election have some bearing on the outcome of the general election. Either they believe these untrue things, which is bad, or they are simply choosing
to treat their voters like idiots, which could be worse.