I’m glad to see that more people – Iain Dale, John Rentoul, Iain Martin among them – are paying attention to Labour’s eclipse. At present Labour could finish third in the popular vote for the first time since 1922 and yet many people seem to assume that a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition or arrangement of some sort is the most likely, even inevitable, outcome of a hung parliament. I don’t believe this is the case and not only because of Nick Clegg’s attack on “desperate” Gordon Brown this morning.
The Liberal Democrats have based their campaign for proportional representation on the grounds that it is unfair that, as they did in 2005, you could win 22% of the votes cast but only 9% of the parliamentary seats. There is some merit to this argument too.
But it would be grossly undermined if the Lib Dems were to do a deal with a Labour party that, say, had 42% of the seats on 27% of the vote.
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