Dan Hannan (Glenn Beck’s favourite Brit) once again hits the nail on the head on the issue of the Hung Parliament and Cameron’s offer to Clegg and the Liberal Democrats of concessions in return for their support of a minority Tory administration. Some of the “purists” like Delingpole, Heffer and Tebbitt decry this move as a classic surrender to the left revealing Cameron in his true colours as a pseudo liberal “wet”in the Edward Heath mould. Promises of more tax cuts and less tree hugging, they claim, would have produced a solid majority paving the way for the restoration of the Thatcher legacy.

Only one problem with that scenario. “Read my lips – lots of tax cuts” constantly proclaimed during the campaign would have been revealed as a huckster’s lie once the first post election budget was announced because Brown’s regime has left us with a massive deficit.

While we’ve been snarled in our domestic quarrels, Greece has been falling to pieces. Unless we take immediate and drastic measures, we might find ourselves in the same position. Our deficit is projected to overtake Greece’s next year, and our economy has until now been propped up, at least in part, by the markets’ confidence that a new government would bring spending under control.

Tough decisions need to be taken. There will probably have to be public spending cuts plus some tax increases – not as traumatic as those to be imposed on Greece but unless implemented now we could find ourselves in a Greek scenario by 2011.

Hannan also sees some overlap in Conservative and Liberal Democrat policies

Both parties, meanwhile, want to scrap ID cards and reverse some of the more statist legislation passed by Labour in the guise of anti-terrorism measures. Both agree that our political system needs renewal. Both want recall mechanisms, popular initiative procedures, reform of the Upper House, fewer MPs, a shift in power from Whips to backbenchers and from executive to legislature. These things would have a far more tangible and benign impact on our political system than proportional representation.

As for tax, I rather agree with the Lib Dems that, when cuts become possible, they should first be directed at low earners. My guess is that most of my fellow Conservatives sympathise: lifting the poor out of tax, as Lords Saatchi and Tebbit propose, would do more to incentivise work than any number of tweaks to the benefits system.

The markets could possibly hold for a day or two waiting for a Con/Lib deal to be sealed but the longer the delay the greater the danger.

Back to the UK. Any falls in sterling, gilts or the FTSE 100 today ought to be modest. But what investors do not want to see is any sign that this is 1974 redux. The longer things drag on, the more likely that becomes, raising the risk of bigger falls.

Fortunately, although Brown is still clinging by his fingernails to the doorknob of Number 10, Downing Street, some Labour MPs are becoming increasingly embarrassed by his refusal to accept reality.

Another former minister, George Howarth, said that ”the maths” were against Labour being able to form an administration and that David Cameron should now be given his chance.

He said: ”I think the proper thing to do, in the interests of the country and in the interests of the Labour Party, is for the Conservatives to form a government, for us to be the Opposition – and be in opposition in a constructive way and where anything the Conservative Party puts forward is in our view in the national interest, to support it.”

…..and so the clock ticks……

OK – let’s get it out of the way…I was wrong in Message #11

BTW…….waving my fist defiantly in the face of the gods of polling and punditry let me make my prediction now……A TORY WIN WITH A SMALL OVERALL  MAJORITY…..excelsior!!!

I was clearly O/Ding on that most tempting of political drugs Wishful Thinking. Instead of gaining the 336 seats that would have provided an overall majority of 10 the Tories were just 30 MPs short.

Here are the figures compared with 2005

Notice how the unequal sizing of constituencies favours Labour. Although the Tories had a greater percentage of the popular vote than Labour in 2005 they won fewer seats and, the other side of the same coin, Labour’s lower percentage than the Tories in 2005 still got them 50 more seats.

Still the key word in that diagram comes on the 2010 overall majority line – “none”. It means that no single party can form a majority government on it’s own. So, although Cleggmania proved a deflated balloon, the  Liberal Democrats still hold the balance between Labour and Conservatives  so young Mr Clegg has been on the receiving end of a flirting offensive from Brown and Cameron whose very transparency would make Jane Austen blush.

David Cameron opened talks with Nick Clegg today about a possible power sharing deal after making a “big, open and comprehensive offer” to the Lib Dem leader in the wake of Britain’s first hung parliament since 1974.

After the closest election race for a generation the Conservatives were left with 307 seats, a net gain of 97 but still 19 short of a majority.

Gordon Brown, who returned to Downing Street at 7am, said that he wanted to try to form a government in the national interest with the Lib Dems and other parties.

The constitutional convention in this situation is fairly set by precedent. The sitting Prime Minister has the first bite of the cherry in forming an administration even though he does not lead the largest party. Only when he feels he would be defeated fairly quickly on a vote of confidence does he then tender his resignation to the Queen who would then, on the advice of her officials, send for the leader of the largest party (in this case David Cameron)

But Clegg has already delivered a pre emptive strike by re iterating his pre election declaration that his first inclination would be to work with the largest party. So, while for the time being Brown remains brooding in Downing Street as Prime Minister Cameron began to  take soundings with the Lib Dems to work out and negotiate parameters of support.

He really had three options.

1. Proceed as a minority administration with every serious parliamentary vote liable to spring the trap of a confidence motion. Though at first sight this could  appear to be a kamikaze mission in reality it might not prove quite so suicidal. This is because electioneering is expensive for political parties who rely on donations and subscriptions to finance their campaigns and, at present they are spent out. Additionally no electorate wants all the inconvenience and distraction of political campaigning inflicted on them within months of the first one and a party or parties which forced a new election might find themselves punished in the polls
2. Run a minority administration through informal understandings with other parties arranged during regular unofficial contacts.
3. Include representatives of other parties in his cabinet thus involving them in the formulation of policy. This would be a coalition which might even subsequently manifest itself as an electoral pact in a future campaign – something which actually happened in 1918 and 1931.

What he has chosen to do is option number two. In a carefully worded statement he listed certain areas where there already appear to be some overlap of agreement with Lib Dem support – education, green issues, lower taxes. He also suggested that a Tory government would work with other parties on investigating possible ways of reforming the voting system which currently, as in the USA, allows candidates to win with a plurality rather than a majority of the votes cast. This is always a hot button issue with third parties.

What he didn’t say was that his government would introduce it – merely investigate the possibilities.

He needed to give an overall impression of flexibility to attract Lib Dem support but he also had to draw some definite lines in the sand to avoid antagonising his own supporters.

He stressed that the ‘bulk” of the Conservative manifesto must be implemented.

He reiterated his line on Europe, immigration, and defence.  That looks like a commitment to Trident, no amnesty for illegal immigrants and – most challengingly – his manifesto position on the EU.  Team Cameron know that these are talismanic symbols to activists of real conservatism – which is why he stressed them.

Cameron, having set out his stall, will now leave key figures in both parties to hammer out some basis of agreement over the next couple of days. If successful then he can then assure the Queen that he has a government that can do business. If it all goes pear shaped then Clegg might then try to work out some sort of agreement with the Labour Party. But public opinion might not be too happy with such a deal. In a recent poll 81% of respondents said that in a hung parliament the party with the most votes and MPs should form the government.

And, over everything, looms the black shadow of the massive deficit that is the legacy of the Brown government. During the campaign this was rarely mentioned but in most quarters there is an understanding that there will have to be substantial cuts in government spending coupled with some tax rises. Both Cameron and Clegg realise some very tough decisions will have to be made and it is quite likely that these cold, hard facts will, in themselves, be sufficient to bring their forces together.

Interesting days indeed…..

To any soldier SNAFU is almost always the order of the day. In war situations things can unravel so fast that no planner can afford to ignore the need for flexibility. So when in Basra in 2005 an SAS undercover operation went wrong and two men were captured and held as hostages by pro Sadrist police and militiamen the regiment immediately prepared to mount a rescue mission. The fear was that unless they acted swiftly the soldiers would be smuggled into Iran and paraded in public as part of a humiliating propaganda coup for the Mullahs.

With the troops all ready to hit the ground running word suddenly came down the line from the UK government in London – no rescue must be attempted as it would give the lie to Whitehall’s claims that Basra was under control. The men had to be sacrificed to save the face of the politicians.

The reaction was swift and stark – the SAS ignored London and rescued their colleagues with clinical precision. Belatedly London changed tack and approved the mission (when it was already well under way) having realised that many members of the elite regiment were willing to mutiny and then hand in their resignations in disgust after the rescue had been completed.

So men’s lives could have been risked for the sake of a feelgood PR puff fed to the BBC.

Lions led by weasels?

Read the full story here.

13 Years of Labour – The Disaster Movie

It’s nearly over after four weeks of campaigning and that has been enough for us all. (How Americans survive 9/10 months I just don’t know.) So on Thursday it’s down to the polling station to cast our votes – then normal life until 10pm when the polls close. We vote old school here with bits of paper (no hanging chads for us) so the first results probably won’t come through until just after midnight. By 2pm enough results will have emerged for some sort of pattern to be identified but, if it’s too close to call we might not know until midday on Friday because a few constituencies in far flung parts don’t do a night count.

I’ll be voting Tory and, despite much of what is written about Cameron in the right wing US blogosphere I shall not be voting with a peg on my nose.

Forget UKIP. I know that some bloggers have latched onto them as the bearers of true conservatism – shows how little they know. I certainly agree with much of their anti EU sentiment and their harder line on immigration but policies alone do not a successful party make. You also have to have a measure of confidence in the leadership cadres and UKIP totally falls down on that. Tin foil hats, revolving eyeballs and bolts in the head tell you that you’re in a UKIP meeting – it really is the world of Buffy.

Probably the majority of Brits are sniffy about the EU – but it’s not high on their agendas. The Tories tried it as a major plank in their platform in 2001 and 2005 and it was not a game changer.

Forget also about Cameron’s admiration of Obama – this is standard boiler plate here in the UK where the Styrofoam columns are still erect and the political and media elite, with a few exceptions, are in a 2008 Hopey Changey time warp. It doesn’t mean Dave has gone all Frank Rich – it’s just empty rhetoric to please the gods of the BBC.

If I had my way I would probably have had a Tory party led either by shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague – a witty, shrewd, laid back Yorkshireman – or Mayor of London Boris Johnson – like Sarah Palin so far out of the political box that the normal rules of politics simply never apply. But we have David Cameron and I, like the Daily Mail, must confess he has begun to grow on me.

The Mail had its doubts about David Cameron sometimes wondering if he was another Clegg-like heir to Blair.

But over the years and with every week of this campaign he has grown in stature displaying serious minded conservative instincts and a tungsten determination to fulfil the Tories traditional function of clearing up the mess left by Labour.

He’s a man who believes firmly in a smaller state – indeed the only one of the three who sees virtue as well as pressing necessity in cutting public spending.

Meanwhile his commitments to the family (the stoutest defence against an overweening state) and to looking after the vulnerable shine through as genuinely as his belief in strong and independent institutions.

In his favour, too, he has shown huge energy, resilience and powers of leadership in uniting his party behind him.

Cameron is quite a complex character (Mick Brown had an interesting take on him in the Telegraph) and I don’t agree with everything he says – but a successful political party in an open, democratic society must always be a coalition of similar but not identical viewpoints and the modern Conservative Party, for all its “greening” and “caring”, is essentially Thatcherite in its commitment to small government and the protection of the family – and that’s good enough for me.

This is the last pre-election message from the bunker. Message #12 will be a comment on the results and will either be stained with the tears of despair or suffused with the spirit of ecstasy – such is the burden carried by the political junkie.

So, my friends spare a thought for this lost soul in the watches of the night (more specifically the early hours of Friday, GMT) as, slumped over the laptop, I measure my country’s fate accompanied only by my trusty bottle of gin…..

BTW…….waving my fist defiantly in the face of the gods of polling and punditry let me make my prediction now……A TORY WIN WITH A SMALL OVERALL  MAJORITY…..excelsior!!!

                                            UK ELECTIONS 1987 – 2005

Just look at the electoral arithmetic for all elections since 1987 and you can see why the Lib Dems advocate electoral reform – they have never had the number of MPs that have proportionately matched their  % of the popular vote. This is because there are many constituencies where they come second. Note how in 1987 they were only just behind Labour in the % of popular votes but ended up with a tiny number of MPs!!!!!

The Conservatives also have grounds for complaint – in 2005 they were just under 3% behind Labour in the popular vote yet were behind by over 150 MPs.

The reason the system favours Labour is because urban seats, especially in the north and Scotland (which Labour tend to win) usually have a smaller number of voters than the large rural seats traditionally won by the Tories.

Notice how recently the “Other” parties have gained larger percentages of the popular vote but have not increased their number of MPs to any great extent.  When a government only has a small overall majority, however, they tend to be courted by the bigger parties.  “Others” are made up of almost entirely of regional parties from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Smaller parties like the Greens, UKIP and BNP find it very difficult to break into Parliament because their votes are spread all over the country.

The magic number this coming Thursday will be 326 – if none of the parties reach that figure then there will be a “Hung” Paliament leading either to a Coalition govt (Lib/Lab or Lib/Con) or the possibility of one party trying to muddle through each week as a minority govt…all very unpredictable…..

If you found the brief montage of the old man’s marriage in Pixar’s “Up” deeply moving then you might understand why this ad currently running on UK TV screens has had a similar impact on many viewers.
It was made for John Lewis, one of Britain’s most successful (and best loved) retail chains.
In about 90 seconds it compresses the whole life of a woman from babyhood to grandmotherhood. Only at the end is it revealed as an ad and even that is done in an understated way.

It’s a simple, linear narrative, with no particular surprises. But it is beautifully, beautifully done. And if you’re honest, it makes you yearn to be that woman – or for your wife or mother or sister to be that woman – and, of course, for your whole life to be cosseted in nice things from John Lewis.

Everything about the clip is out of sync with much of what we see on TV or in the cinema. It’s not gritty, violent, erotic or edgy. It’s incredibly old fashioned with it’s overarching message of family values and loving relationships constant through the buffets of time.
It’s just an ad – but it contains a message that says more about conservative values than a whole library of academic tomes.

In the UK National Insurance (NI) is in some ways similar to Social Security in the USA. Contributions are paid by both employers and employees. By doing so employees are entitled to certain benefits. The amount you pay depends on how much you earn and whether you are self-employed or not.

The Labour government plans to increase all contributions by 1% in April 2011 thus hoping to raise  money to protect front line services in the public sector. The Tories say if they come to power they will scrap the increase. The debate has been robust and Gordon Brown has attacked the Tories in no uncertain terms.

And so to cut six billion pounds from the economy now, as the Conservative are suggesting, would risk reversing our progress and creating a double-dip recession.

This mantra has oft been repeated by Labour speakers and the punditocracy of the left. But each time it is used it merely serves to underline the reason why there is no such thing as a prosperous socialist economy. To Brown (and other believers in the efficacy of big government like President Obama) the formula is quite simple

THE ECONOMY = THE GOVERNMENT

So let’s just get it straight, Gordon. Scrapping the 1% NI increase will not cut six billion pounds from the economy. It will still be there but, instead of flowing into the coffers of Whitehall to be then redistributed as largesse to whoever takes the government’s fancy it will remain in the pockets and purses of employees to spend or invest as they wish and keep down labour costs for employers, especially for those small businesses whose survival is essential for the recovery of our economy.

Simple….

CHATTERING CLASSES OF THE WORLD UNITE – YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR ARUGULA!!!!

Is it possible that Kathleen Parker and David Brooks were in the Guardian’s London offices a few days ago?  Or maybe that’s just my febrile imagination. But there certainly is a waft of the Parker/Brooks perfume in this Guardian piece telling us all to vote Liberal Democrat – and be “clear and proud” about it!

The Liberal Democrats were green before the other parties and remain so. Their commitment to education is bred in the bone. So is their comfort with a European project which, for all its flaws, remains central to this country’s destiny. They are willing to contemplate a British defence policy without Trident renewal. They were right about Iraq, the biggest foreign policy judgment call of the past half-century, when Labour and the Tories were both catastrophically and stupidly wrong. They have resisted the rush to the overmighty centralised state when others have not. At key moments, when tough issues of press freedom have been at stake, they have been the first to rally in support. Above all, they believe in and stand for full, not semi-skimmed, electoral reform. And they have had a revelatory campaign. Trapped in the arid, name-calling two-party politics of the House of Commons, Nick Clegg has seldom had the chance to shine. Released into the daylight of equal debate, he has given the other two parties the fright of their lives.

A newspaper that is proudly rooted in the liberal as well as the labour tradition – and whose advocacy of constitutional reform stretches back to the debates of 1831-32 – cannot ignore such a record. If not now, when? The answer is clear and proud. Now.

Whatever…..at least they left out a reference to Clegg’s perfectly creased pants.

BTW – ignore that stuff about the Lib Dems and education and decentralising the state. By definition any group of people so closely sold on the EU is committed to a bossy, interfering and bureaucratic style of government constantly telling us what we must do for our own good.

Sorry, Guardianistas, but your declaration succinctly encapsulates every reason why I would rather shove my hands into a wasps nest than vote Liberal Democrat….