Thinking the unthinkable

Peter From Maidstone

In the event of a LabCon pact I will be joining several million other people marching on Downing Street to demand our franchise back!

Dennis Churchill

I suppose it would end the pretence that the main stream parties are really different and we are not ruled by an unchangeable (for now) political class.

wrinkled weasel

Kettle imagines a joint statement that includes this gem:

"Neither of our parties has received a mandate to govern alone."

The real danger is that neither parties will get a mandate to govern alone because nobody trusts them to do so. But instead of there being an alternative, a real alternative to the utter third-ratedness of the Tories and Labour, there is a gaping, vaccuous nothing.

It is not unthinkable that a coalition of this sort could exist, especially if it coincided with a degree of civil unrest or a major domestic terror incident.

What is so depressing is that the parties are so alike, and Cameron is so empty of vision that nothing much will change. Taxes will not significantly be cut, hospitals will not magically become cleaner, Afghanistan will still be an issue and the pall of political correctness will remain a mephitic stain on the mores of society.

bert

Lol silly season is still going strong. This idea is pure nonsense, on any level. The Labour party would rather go into coalition with Kim Jong Il than Cameron.

Prodicus

No. Tory landslide. Why you no rissen?

Tarquin Superbus

But even if the agreement could be sorted out, who would be PM?

If the coalition were to be more or less equal, it couldn't really be either of the party leaders. MacDonald and Lloyd George got away with it because they were so clearly not the dominant partners in the coalition, living in Number 10 didn't help. But to give your opponent the keys to No. 10 would be a catastrophic blunder, PR wise, so it'd have to be a figure with no ambitions to lead the party. Ken Clarke seems a good idea, since Labour, the people and the Tories all seem to respect him, but he's clearly past his leadership days.

Thomas Cussans

Without Brown as leader, there may be as much as a one-in-eight million chance of a Tory-Lab
coalition. With Brown as leader, there is precisely none.

This is just Kettle fishing around vainly for some means, however laughable, of NuLab clinging on to office.

brian kellt

To resolve some very divisive social and demographic problems I believe that in the not too distant future it is essential that some sort of national govt is established.

TGF UKIP

Only in the Guardian .......... but what is much more on the cards given the increasingly inevitable Dave disaster at the polls, is a hung parliament with Labour still very possibly the largest party and Brown then offering a Unity National Government (in the country's interest, of course.)

As Dave sinks before the wave of Tory wrath and vengeance, what a fittingly humiliating epitaph on the folly of Blue Labour that will be.

Snowman

It that were to happen it would be suicidal for both parties. The outcome would be either a massive rise in the voting for the BNP/UKIP/Independent candidates at the next election, or an emergence of a new party that would sweep the two stale set-ups away for good.

Occasional Ostrich

Lab-Con coalition? Oh . . . I remember one of those. We called it a "National Government". It was initially pretty ineffective and only started working properly once it was being effectively run by the Conservatives.

David Lindsay

Martin Kettle has a point, and such arrangements have long been normal in local government. Labour and Tory activists do not hate each other's parties in the way that they both hate the Lib Dems, a sentiment returned with interest.

But they should not stop, even if they started, at a coalition. They should merge. Within the next 10, possibly five, years, they will merge.

That would create the space for the re-emergence of a movement whose priorities included the Welfare State, workers' rights, trade unionism, the co-operative movement, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation rather than environmentalism, fair taxation, full employment, proper local government, a powerful Parliament, and a base of real property from which every household could resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State. While having a no less absolute commitment to the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, grammar schools, traditional moral and social values, controlled importation and immigration, and a realistic foreign policy.

And it would create the space for the re-emergence of a movement whose priorities included agriculture, manufacturing, and small business. National sovereignty, the Union, economic patriotism, local variation, and historical consciousness. Traditional moral and social values, the whole Biblical and Classical patrimony of the West, close-knit communities, law and order, and civil liberties. Academic standards, all forms of art, mass political participation within a constitutional framework ("King and People" against the Whig magnates), and conservation rather than environmentalism. A realistic foreign policy, the Commonwealth, the constitutional and other ties among the Realms and Territories having the British monarch as Head of State or other such constitutional links, the status of the English language and the rights of its speakers both throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and the rights of British-descended communities throughout the world. The longstanding and significant British ties to the Arab world, support for the Slavs in general and for Russia in particular as the gatekeepers of the Biblical-Classical civilisation, and a natural affinity with Confucian culture. And exactly as much central or local government action as is required by these priorities, with a profound suspicion of an American influence and action characteristically defined against them.

A coalition between those two, or the existence of them both in and as the same governing party, would be ideal. Such a party could and would also include historic Liberalism's concern for local communitarian populism, the indefatigable pursuit of single issues, the Nonconformist social conscience, the legacy of Keynes and Beveridge, traditional moral and social values (again), conservation rather than environmentalism (again), national sovereignty (again), a realistic foreign policy (again), the Commonwealth (again), the peace activism historically exemplified by Sir Herbert Samuel, redress of economic and political grievances in the countryside, and the needs and concerns of areas remote from the centres of power both in the United Kingdom and in each of its constituent parts.

These are the priorities of the moderate, mainstream middle of British public opinion, so that they comprise the true "centre ground", whereas other views, while not necessarily illegitimate, are nevertheless extreme and eccentric.

Nicholas

Ha ha! Brown Der Fuhrer in Der Bunker mit der cyanide pill und der revolver before coalition mit Der Tories!

For so much obsession with Brown and the New Labour "celebs" you really don't understand The Monster. He is an egotistical, would-be tyrant of the 1930's Soviet pattern, desperately trying to create a personality cult like all the other nasty dictators in history and pandered to by the ghastly left who breezed in and took over when Blair did his exit. Coalition? Not a chance.

Besides, it won't be a consideration. Labour are going to get slaughtered - beyond even their wildest fears. The Westminster village has completely underestimated the public mood. The majority detest New Labour in general and Brown in particular, even grass roots Labour voters. The arrogant smirks will be wiped off the misfits faces and they will be disempowered by the people. Brown, Straw, Harmon, Hoon and all the other insufferable neo-Kinnockian gits will no longer be able to strut, to posture and to connive in the oppression of the British people. They are going to get theirs. And when the dust settles and the Tories examine the books the full horror of the deceit and subterfuge will be revealed and some very prominent New Labour gauleiters will go to prison.

Verity

Well said, as always, TGI UKIP.

You, too, Nicholas. But surely you do not think that the Tories are going to squeak in? I do not detect the slenderest scintilla of enthusiasm for this greedy, egotistical, principle-free, ideas-bereft candidate.

And Brown's paid-for base is almost as large as all the dead voters in Chicago graveyards. He's got the illegal postal vote, organised by neighbourhood "uncles", sewn up. And, if they can be bothered to get up off the couch and miss a TV programme, the welfare sector, which Labour has carefully grown.

The next time we get a Tory in office, if this election and Dave between them do not kill off, the long-term welfare sector has to be disenfranchised and only put back on the electoral roll when they gain employment and start paying into the system. People who have lost their employment owing to disastrous mismanagement of the economy by Labour should have two years to find employment and retain their vote.

For sure, there is no appetite for David Cameron. Even at this stage, it is not too late for the Tories to stave off electoral disaster by replacing Dave.

Snowman

Nicholas @ 5.22: I take it then you no fan of nuLabour.

What puzzles and saddens me is that you associate the Labour’s failures with personalities. Did it ever occur to you that someone may have said almost the same about the Tories prior to 1997? The erring may have had a different complexion, but the country got fed up with them thoroughly, too. Shouldn’t we be looking at the system rather than individuals with whom, by many accounts, one may share a pint before they reach power. Could it be that it’s the set-up that turns them into obsessed manipulators of one sort or another?

JONNY

Oh my God - another 5 months of this imbecilic hypothesia

Prodicus

Nicholas: Correct.

The Village has been soothed to sleep by the sweet sound of its own familiar mantras. Even the polls don't tell half the story. And the campaign hasn't started yet.

The Villagers will get the shock of their little political lifetimes when the lethal scale of public fury shows itself on election night. Even Balls and Cooper will be on suicide watch. Dimbleboid, Thrasher and dear old Dame Michael will be reduced to gabbling as they switch from OB to OB, the 'Portillo moments' coming so thick and fast it will make Andrew Marr's head swim.

Brown will not concede gracefully. From the Great Ruiner there will be silence. He would shoot himself in the head rather than congratulate Cameron and acknowledge the will of the peasants. But the peasants will have their revenge on the man and on the Party who have robbed and poked and prodded and fingerprinted and police-checked and photographed and taxed them to penury for the next twenty five years.

Hung parliament my a4$e.

Moraymint

" ... the idea of a LabCon pact ..."

Isn't there one already? I can't tell the difference between them.

Olaf Rye

If Labour gets enough votes to force a hung parliament, then there is truly no hope for the British electorate. What exactly does a government have to do to destroy this nation before the public turns against it and consigns the party to the dustbin of history ? If Labour is not thoroughly defeated and the conservatives get a grip on the disastrous state of the public finances, this country will not be worth living in as the IMF will probably be forced to intervene. Let the Guardianistas furiously masturbate whilst fantasising about the relevance of the left and its importance, but the rest of us should shudder at the thought of anything less than a decisive Tory majority in these circumstances.

David Lindsay

Those of you who think that there is going to be a Cameron landslide, or even an overall majority, you must be living in the seats that the Tories already hold in the South East. There, they are going to pile up the sorts of majorities that the miners used to give Labour MPs. But where are the miners now?

The Tories are nowhere - they barely even exist - in Scotland, Wales, the North, the Midlands or the West Country, in which last Jeremy Browne, the Lib Dem running the campaign that is going to wipe the Tories off the map, is going to be rewarded with Ministerial office under Cameron within hours of that wipeout.

Add in the number of Suffolk MPs retiring, and the South West Norfolk situation, and all we need now is some sort of network of Independents in East Anglia, committed to the principles set out in my fourth paragraph at 5:16pm. Funded by Sir Jeremy Bagge perhaps?

Then we could all see, in full, that Cameron has no following whatever beyond London and its immediate hinterland.

Moraymint

Prodicus said, " ... the Party who have robbed and poked and prodded and fingerprinted and police-checked and photographed and taxed them to penury for the next twenty five years."

Yup.

The key point is "the next 25 years". Few of our disinterested, supine fellow citizens and fewer still of the "experts" and politicians who pop up in the newspapers and on the radio and TV have yet properly twigged the almost unimaginable scale of the havoc wreaked by the Labour Party on this country over the past 12 years.

Peak Oil will wipe out any hope whatsoever of a return to easy and "infinite" economic growth. Our debts - personal, commercial and state - will have to be serviced and repaid out of accounts receivable: and they are going to be few and far between. Many will default - with all the grief that that entails.

For many individuals, businesses and states the next decade or two will be hell on earth. No politician or political party is going to countenance this future scenario, still less prepare the nation for it.

As we leave mankind's era of cheap energy (it'll happen more rapidly and more shockingly than most folk can imagine), we could well be entering the era of every man for himself if we're not very careful.

It saddens me to listen to and watch our political class going through contortions to persuade us that, really, we're only experiencing a little local difficulty and that, give it a year or so, we'll all be back to borrowing and consuming again as if 12 years of unreconstructed Marxism had never happened.

We'll see.

Verity

David Lindsay is correct. The Tories, outside London and its immediate hinterland now have no enthusiasts, thanks to vapid, greedy, not-overly-bright Dave.

There is certainly no hunger anywhere for a Dave premiership.

Fearless Frank

Moraymint 6:06pm

" ... the idea of a LabCon pact ..."

Isn't there one already? I can't tell the difference between them.

Took the words right out of my mouth

General Zod

Aren't you in Mexico, Verity? Strange if so that you have such a sense of the mood of people here.

John David Barnett

A grand coalition would be hugely popular.

John David Barnett

Dear Verity

I take it that you aren't too impressed by Mr Cameron.

Don't worry. Your fears about him are groundless. He will run the country with the same smoothness that has characterised his rejuvenative handling of the Conswervative Party and his deft outflanking of Labour in the House of Commons.

After just a few months of his premiership, you will be one of millions of grateful Britons who at last see a ray of light at the end of the tunnel.

Cameron is great. Cameron is great. Cameron is great.

Just keep repeating this mantra and in a short time the world will seem a warmer, happier and more hopeful place.

It worked for me!

Verity

General Zod, well it's only strange if you are rather provincial. With the internet have come services like newspapers and magazines online. And broadcasting online. And blogs. And very cheap long distance calls. I probably have as good a sense of the disillusion and discontent in Britain as you do. And am probably much better informed about some other countries than you.

You may have noticed that these services work in reverse and enable you and people living in Britain to feel informed enough to comment on the United States, for example; or China.

Nicholas

Snowman: "What puzzles and saddens me is that you associate the Labour’s failures with personalities."

No puzzle and no sadness. Whether personalities or the Borg collective that they represent New Labour are the scum of the earth, the bastard progeny of Labour, always bad for Britain. There is no comparison with the Tories, even the wet, naive Red Tories of modern parlance. At its worst John Major's government was not a patch on these scum in the dire and detestable stakes. Bumbling incompetence and sleaze are as nothing compared to deliberate, spiteful, envious malevolence and the realities of cod-communism. Look at the face of The Monster Brown - everything can be read there if you have eyes to see.

They came to power on a con. And they duped a naive public that swallowed the propaganda of vicious little shits like Campbell. Once in power their bandwagon army of PC wimmen and barmy would-be Soviets infested our public life. Behind their empty promises and hollow intent lay the true face of Labour, old or new, the evil visage of people who wanted to create cultural revolution here, to emulate Stalin and Mao, wannabe Soviets, East Germans and Viet Cong, people locked in perpetual student protest and the politics of division, unable to see beyond a ridiculous "struggle" in the first quarter of the last century against a mythical oppressive establishment. Their beliefs rose-tinted by that bloody red flag they think so much of. Well, they certainly brought cultural revolution. They replaced that mythical oppressive establishment with a real oppressive establishment. Has it been good for us? Has it Hell.

And now the rump of the worst government ever imposed on the British. The venal, self-serving creatures that conspired with Brown against Blair, or betrayed their own party, rewarded to take their place amongst a cabinet of malevolent F-wits who continue to vex the British people like rabid dogs worrying sheep.

Personalities? Yes. Just like the Nazis. A collective of self-serving misfits and imbeciles with a "vision" that is of no use to man nor beast but which has done plenty of harm. Corrupted by power? No! These arseholes brought their own inherent corruption to the positions of power they seized by deception. Are any of them worthy? Can any of them stand on integrity, truth, decency and compassion? Not a one. But they delude themselves aplenty - and they continue to connive to delude everyone else, aided and abetted by their ghastly comrades in the BBC. When I look at them I see the same ghastly coterie that gathered round Hitler and spewed his lies.

Drink with the scum? To quote one of their rotten collective, I'd rather have my balls nailed to a speeding train.

But you neatly encapsulate the problem. As long as we play the ridiculous gentlemans game of parliamentary cricket, as long as we talk about the faults of the system (which served us well for centuries until these scum came along), as long as we express more concern about the prospect of Cameron and his wets than the scum actually holding power, we play their game and we are their "useful idiots".

They deserve rebellion not bad polling and the scaffold or the firing squad rather than being shown the door. No one has listed in full their crimes and scandals - it is too difficult, too mammoth a task to set it all out.

Watt Tyler

The Left knows the score better than the so-called Right. Anything to sustain the Long March of Marxism. Even a LabCon coallition.

When will the useful idiots awaken? We have LabLibCon Stitch-Up now. And in the next election, you get a chance to vote it into history. Then yOu won't, Peter From Maidstone, need to march on Downing Street to demand a franchise back. They'd just laugh at you, in any case.

When will you just wake up, and use your vote.

Victor Southern

I would presume Verity that your cheap long-distance calls are made to a small circle of acquaintances. It is natural then that you reflect their supposed views which are actually yours.

Some of us live in this country and meet a wide number of people socially, at work, on the trains, buses or in the supermarkets. I have only met two Labour supporters in the past 6 months. True I meet a number who are indifferent but also many who would walk in bare feet to vote Brown out.

The absurd suggestion of a coalition with Labour would not result in strengthening Parliamen, as David Lindsay claims, but its neutering and the effective disenfranchisement of the whole nation.

At that time it would be correct to bring back the legions from foreign parts so that a military coup be effected. Wasn't that why Rome kept victorious armies camped far from the city?

Paul T Horgan

I would bet on this.

Think of it as a one-off insurance payment.

And the odds would be quite good. And they would be a good form of compensation should the ridiculous become reality.

Archie

John David Barnett and General Zod You will find that Verity is spot on. Read any blogs - even those of the ghastly BBC - and there is not one jot nor one tittle of enthusiasm for a Cameron-led Tory party outside the Notting Hill chatterati, oh, and Matthew d'Ancona.

Olaf Rye

Lovely tirade, Nicholas. It is this sort of anger that must be expressed before people sit with moist eyes whilst thinking of a socialist utopia and quiver in fear about assuming responsibility for their own lives and not having the nanny state there to tell them what to do, to protect them, and to employ them. Instead of the Nazis, which incidentally is an apposite analogy, I think of the sanctimonious and evil lunatics in East Germany and their belief that society is served by their brilliance in office. After all, we resemble the USSR and East Germany more and more--armies of snoopers, people denouncing ideologically unsound thoughts, the manipulation of the media for their own sordid purposes. An open revolt is what is needed, at least something tantamount to the petrol blockades, to give the public some reminder of our descent into a police state run by bureaucrats. And to think, this was the nation of Adam Smith !

David Lindsay

Watt Tyler presumbaly means UKIP. But Lord Pearson, an economic neoliberal who therefore fully supports neoconservative foreign policy, has promised to dissolve UKIP if the Conservative Leader, but no one else, promises an In/Out referendum on the EU, but nothing else on any issue. UKIP is now just another internal Conservative Party pressure group.

Victor Southern, in that case, none of the people you know must have voted in any recent local by-election in a ward within a marginal seat. When it comes to those, the actual votes of the people most likely to vote, the Tories are doing disastrously.

I also strongly suspect that Victor Southern is true to his name, and know no one in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland (where the Tories are standing this time), the North, the Midlands or the West Country: the places where the Tories ahve to win seats, rather than where they already hold them. And then there are the Turnip Taliban, the Suffolk Swedes and whoever else are yet to appear in South-Eastern or East Anglian places more than 50 miles from London.

In any case, who would be in or around a Cameron Government?

When Paddy Ashdown was UN High Representative for Bosnia, his political adviser was one Ed Llewellyn, now Chief of Staff to David Cameron. And now the talk is of the pro-war Ashdown as Minister under Cameron. Along with his party's Somerset MPs David Laws and Jeremy Browne, both Orange Book Boys, but Browne in fact responsible for the Lib Dem General Election campaign in the West Country. Not in the North, against Labour. In the West Country. Against the Tories. Meanwhile, Liz Truss led the 1990s drive among Lib Dem students to make that party anti-monarchist.

At least, the Tory MPs Greg Clark, Chris Grayling, the splendidly anti-war Andrew Lansley, David Mundell, Rob Wilson and Stephen O'Brien, as well as the influential columnist Daniel Finkelstein, are former members of the SDP. There may very well be more. There are certainly more old SDP hands in the Shadow Cabinet than on the Lib Dem front bench. Seriously. And what was wrong with the SDP? Four things: the betrayal of Gaitskellism over Europe; the betrayal of Christian Socialism, and, lest we forget, of Gaitskellism (as well as of a section of High Toryism), over nuclear weapons; the decadent social libertinism of Roy Jenkins; and the comprehensive schools mania of Shirley Williams. Cameron all over.

Andrew Adonis (also ex-SDP), James Purnell, Peter "Young Communist League" Mandelson, Matthew Taylor, Julian Le Grand, Ken Anderson, Geoff "Old Trot Director of a Communist Party Continuity Organisation" Mulgan, Bernard Gray, Martin Read, Sir Peter Gershon, and now this. Expect the unrepentant old Trotskyist likes of Stephen Byers and Alan "Haze of Dope" Milburn to be hanging around any Cameron Government. Don't even bet against Blair attending Cabinet, if he's not in prison by then.

But speaking of Adonis, rather than move him from Transport to Education, the two positions should be merged and given to Peter Hitchens, who could fill the country with railway stations and grammar schools. Now, that really would be a Government of All The Talents.

Noa Zrk

We might as well have Dave and Harridan between the sheets, as it were, in the event of a tie, it would provide more entertainment than Dave and Mandy. Truth be told, we really won't notice the difference....

Andy Leeds

Daft idea. And let us suppose that just for a moment it was a goer. What should Dave's price be for joining a coalition ? In Imperial China an official who had displeased the Emperor would receive a length of silken cord. I would send round to 'Gordon the Moron' a pearl (false, he isn't worth the real things) encrusted dagger. The message is the same.

David Lindsay

"We might as well have Dave and Harridan between the sheets"

Made rather more distasteful by the fact that they are cousins. Why does no one ever mention that fact?

Victor Southern

David Lindsay

They don't mention that "fact" because it is untrue, not that it would matter much if it were. The relationship is by marriage only as Cameron's Great-Uncle married Harman's Aunt. They have no discernible blood relationship.

But, I believe your understanding of facts is a little off-standard.

Watt Tyler

David Lindsay

No Pearson hasn't promised anything of the sort. I had to put you right on this before. Stop lying about this.

2trueblue

Not even in mars will it happen. Cameroon may not be peoples personal choice to have dinner with but I just want Labour out and am not looking for a relationship, just someone more competent to run the country. Cameron can and will get in, the question is what sort of majority will the tories get? If we get a hung parliment then we are out of play. As it is we will be paying off Gordons debt for the rest of our lives.

Will Cooling

What is slightly amusing is that Kettle ignores the very history he references. Of the three 'grand coalitions' only one of them was a genuine cross-party coalition and that was the Churchill wartime government which reallly was odd given that until Chamberlain died Churchill was completely outside the party structures.

But the other two examples (save the dying months of the Asquith Government) are of a faction of the left-wing part splitting because they think that only in alliance with the Tories can they get what they see as difficult but necessary measures through. That is something very different from the grand coalition idea that Kettle floats. Its also one that is slightly plausible - after all surely it would be attractive to the Blairites to throw their lot in with the Tories and pursue their mana for marketisation after the Labour Left wins the forthcoming leadership election.

Herbert Thornton

What an entertaining forecast, but how to account for it? Is it a symptom of a state of extreme panic in the Establishment?

There are already serious suspicions of vote rigging - about which nothing is done - and the broken promise to hold a referendum is treated as a mere trifle. So how much worse can it get? Panic in an already morally corrupt Establishment is a very dangerous thing.

What can one say? If a Labour-Tory coalition is 'not unthinkable', why not a Labour-Tory-Islamic one? It would be the acme of politically correct, multicultural diversity would it not? It's enough to induce nightmares.

Fergus Pickering

There doesn't need to be enthusiasm for Dave, just hatred and contempt for Broon. In fact I think enthusiasm for a politician is a most unhealthy thing. It certainly went to Maggie's head. And as for the unspeakable Blair. Don't be enthusiastic about politicians. Unless the name is Boris, but who could resist the caped crusader on his bike?

Vulture

@ John David Barnett. Whatever you are on, can you send me some too? I could do with cheering up in these grey days.

'Cameron is great'. He sure is - if you are one of those who want us to continue our Gadarene dive to perdition.

What has this man ever done - or even promised to do - to justify your demented and deluded enthusiasm? Have you learned nothing from the Blair years?

Cameron is a fink. This wretched Govt. has turned Britain into a toilet. Dave can't even pull the chain. He'll just add to the overflow.

He is not great. To misquote Gerard Manley Hopkins: He is soft s**t in an hourglass.

Dorothy Wilson

Can I refer to an interview Michael Heseltine gave on the Andrew Neil Satuday evening programme a few weeks ago?

MH's view was, that in the event of a hung parliament, the nation's "books" would have to be open to the leaders of all the parties. That would reveal the full extent of the financial mess Labour has landed us with and would necessitate another election, which the Conservatives would win easily.

Also, the discussions of the effects of a hung parliament seem to ignore the reaction of the markets and the credit rating agencies. They could well take fright with serious consequences for the pound and interest rates. Again that is likely to result in another election pretty quickly.

TGF UKIP

Nicholas, David Lindsay etc, it is quite true to say that Cameron and his Exotics do not sell well up here, if at all. What massively compunds that problem, though, is that to get any sort of majority at all they would have to pick up every marginal and semi marginal in the SE, SW, E Mids and E Anglia and it is in precisely those same areas that UKIP are also strongest, and that is most certainly not by coincidence.

In 05 the concensus was that UKIP prevented Tory victories in c 28 seats and that was under Michael Howard, a genuinely eurosceptic conservative Tory Leader. This time it's going to be a multiple of 28 seats in which "the nutters and fruitcakes" have their revenge for Cameron's sixth form insult.

John David Barnett

Dear Mr Vulture

I implore you to think again.

John Bracewell

Verity - all comments
You are away with the fairies in the same way as Brown, completely deluded and biased.

General Zod

I'm sure you've accused me of being a metropolitan liberal in the past, Verity, and now I'm "provincial". Try to be consistent, please.

You are wrong on the mood in the country in which you do not live, just as you are wrong on everything else.

Derek

General Zod I don't think that there is anything necessarily contradictory in being called a provincial metropolitan liberal, is there? After all, it is presumably not for nothing that we sometimes refer to the "Westminster Village" and argue that many of the chatterati who live in Islington or Notting Hill Gate are cut off from the rest of the country in certain serious ways...

Meanwhile, the country appears to be on a similar political trajectory to the United States, although perhaps rather further ahead of the curve, despite the encouraging tea party movement over there which resulted in a rebuff both to the Democrats and the Republicans in last November's elections. The Washington Times on Friday carried an article headed "The prospects for revolt in 2010. Americans finally getting fed up with big-government" which ended with the thought which mutatis mutandis our own main parties might ponder as they look towards our General Election: "One of 2010's most intriguing questions will be whether the American people's aggregated nausea by the November election triggers the peaceful overthrow of the United States government".

Pass the tea bags!

General Zod

Hmm, "provincial metropolitan" is not an oxymoron, eh?

Herbert Thornton

Now I begin to wonder if a coalition of UKIP, BNP and disaffected Conservatives is unthinkable. It would be more in the national interest than the hysterical idea floated in the Guardian.

Noa Zrk

Herbert Thornton -03.01@1.11pm
An interesting thought and it spurred me to do a bit of research and extrapolation based on the BBC published EC UK election results in June 2009, showing party percentages of the vote.
Pardon the Brown boring numbers bit, but its important and I'll keep it as short as possible.
1.LibDems 13.7%, Labour 15.7% -Total 29.4%
2.Conservatives - 27.7%
3.UKIP. 16.5%, BNP.6.2%,Eng Dem.1.8%, No2Eu,1.0%-Total 25.5%
It may not be as up to date as a UGov or Mori poll, and it reflects a proportional representation and not a FPTP election, but its still instructive.
In short a UKIP/BNP etc coalition would be a serious threat to both Labour and Conservative complacency, especially if, say 10 to 20% of the Conservative party went with it.That would give a right wing government a clear majority over Labour, even without an alliance being necessary with a truncated Cameron Conservative party.
Its no wonder the Conservatives argue that a vote for UKIP and the BNP is a wasted vote. They must wake up screaming in the night at the prospect of this elephant coming into the room.
At the moment however, I think the chances of an alliance are remote to non-existant. Pearson's UKIP is too patrician and
Tory; the BNP too suspicious and ideologically uncompromising. There is no master politician in either party able to seize and deliver the prize on offer.

However if it happened it could be an election winner. And such a new broom would sweep exceedingly clean.