Thinking About: The Next Election

With a little under two months to go the next election, to be held on May 7th, it’s already looking like a classic and very interesting contest – so much so that I have already booked the following day off work so that I can sleep in after staying up most of, if not all of, the night watching the results as they come in. To say that almost anything could happen on the night in question is almost an understatement. With an unpopular government in office, made up of an unpopular coalition, as well as an untrusted opposition who can’t seem to make any significant gains despite the incumbents unpopularity and, if that wasn’t enough, an apparently hugely popular but completely untested minority party (to say the least) snapping at everyone’s heels it’s really anyone’s guess what the final make-up of the next parliament never mind the next government will be. There are so many questions awaiting answers:

Can the Conservatives win an outright majority this time or will there be a second (unprecedented?) coalition government?

If it is another coalition who will be the partners? Conservative & UKIP if they do spectacularly well for themselves? Conservative & Liberal Democrats again if the Lib Dems survive the expected electoral massacre? Labour and Liberal Democrats (with the same caveat)? Labour and SNP especially if the SNP do as well as everyone expects?

Can Labour gain an absolute majority this time despite the electorate’s misgivings about their apparent mishandling of the economy last time around?

Just how many seats will UKIP win when it comes down to the crunch of Election Day? Will people see them as more than a protest party and actually put at least some of them in positions of power?

Just how many seats will the SNP win and what will this mean for Scottish Independence which hasn’t really gone very far away after the shock results of the recent referendum.

Just how many seats will the Liberal Democrats lose? What, if anything, will remain of one of the most hated parties in recent history on May 8th? Will Nick Clegg hold on to his own seat or will he suffer the ultimate humiliation and be ousted?

How well will the Green Party do after winning their first seat last time? In the local elections they regularly beat the Lib Dems into 4th and sometimes 5th place. Can they gain a few more seats at the Liberal’s expense?

As they say it is all to play for. I’m expecting canvassing from all parties large and small to be unprecedented. I might even have candidates at my door and might even tell them what I think! But how do I think things will turn out and how do I want things to happen?

I think that the most likely result – although not exactly what I would hope for – is that the Conservatives will win but with a reduced number of seats which will force them into an unholy alliance with UKIP and the tattered remains of the Lib Dem massacre as they have nowhere else to go and nothing left to lose. The next most likely result is that Labour will win (barely) but be without a working majority and will join with the SNP – necessitating some serious concessions in their inexorable move to independence – as well as the enlarged Green party (ditto). The third possibility, and what a real possibility it is, is that no one will gain overall control and cannot join together with other parties to make a stable coalition and a second election is forced upon us later in the year. It’s not unheard of just rather rare.

So, we’re probably going to have another coalition government (indeed we may be witnessing the end of single party governments for the foreseeable future) but whether it will be on the right or the left is anyone’s guess. Exciting isn’t it!