Go hang yourselves

WHAT message was the great British public trying to send their beloved politicians in this unpredictable, patchwork election?

How about go hang, the lot of you?

In Harrogate, they hated the Liberal Democrats to a remarkable degree and turned Tory; in Redcar, they decapitated their Labour MP and installed a Lib Dem with an astonishing 21.8 per cent swing; in City of Durham, after a politically and personally bitter campaign ended with a handshake between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Carol Woods that made John Terry and Wayne Bridge look the best of friends, they remarkably chose to stick with Labour.

The British people were so angered by their politicians’ behaviour over expenses and so dismayed by the parties’ inability to fight an honest campaign about the scale of the cuts to come they could declare no one an outright winner.

No party had passed the finishing line of 326 seats to be able to form a government in their own right, and so a hung parliament was called for the first time since 1974.

As the horsetrading began, the Conservatives claimed the moral high ground, but not the comprehensive victory. They had won 97 more seats – more even than Margaret Thatcher had won in her 1979 landslide. But they had gained only 36 per cent of the vote – a lot less even than John Major won in 1992.

The classic North-East marginals showed the conundrum perfectly. Stockton South went blue by just 332 votes, whereas Tynemouth refused to turn at all – in fact, Alan Campbell, the Labour MP, increased his majority by 249 votes.

While it was not enough for David Cameron to go it alone, it was enough for Gordon Brown to step aside and let him have a try.

Labour had performed badly, but not badly enough to be humiliated – that would have come in the North-East if it had lost a seat on Tyneside, where the Lib Dems had high hopes, and on Wearside, where the Tories convinced themselves they had real hopes.

In fact, earlier in the campaign Labour had looked like limping in third with a lower share of the vote than Michael Foot’s 27.6 per cent in 1983, so perhaps Mr Brown was a little relieved to have pulled 29 per cent.

But the wolves of the Tory press would have torn Mr Brown limb from limb if he had had the audacity to exercise his right, as the Prime Minister, to put together a minority government.

It was a massive defeat – rejection by more than 70 per cent of voters. Even El Gordo the Great Survivo cannot escape this time. He will fall from his high wire next week, and David Miliband, the South Shields MP, will be a favourite to replace him.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg could not have jumped into the ring to catch Mr Brown. In three constituencies in two weeks – Newcastle North, Redcar, City of Durham – Mr Clegg looked into The Northern Echo’s voice recorder and promised that a vote for him was a vote for “change, real change”. How could he prop up the same old face and present it as a victory for change, real change?

But even as Mr Clegg was being courted by the Conservatives, his wounds must have smarted.

He lit up the TV Leaders’ Debates. He energised what would otherwise have been, in his own words, “another boring, tedious, mindnumbing, point-scoring campaign between Labour and Conservative”. At the height of Cleggmania, he was vying with Mr Cameron at the head of the polls.

Yet, in the last half hour of the final TV debate, he was exposed on Europe, immigration and nuclear defence – subjects where liberal views are not popular with the British people.

So no Bucks Fizz for the Lib Dems. Instead, a sorry limp home with just 23 per cent of the vote – a slim improvement on 2005 – and five lost seats, including the cheeky Lembit Opik, the most surprising casualty of the night.

But because of the hung nature of the parliament, Mr Clegg is still kingmaker. Only having 57 seats behind him, though, does not give him much oomph to make princely demands.

Four choices now lie ahead. The Conservatives could strike out on their own in a minority government, daring their opponents to bring them down. But they look too weak to prosper… Or Mr Brown could pull together a broad alliance of Lib Dems, Scottish and Welsh nationalists, the first Green MP Caroline Lucas, and a sprinkling of Irish MPs. But this looks too much of a mish-mash to prosper… Option number three is a formal Con/Lib coalition government, perhaps with Mr Clegg and Vince Cable in Mr Cameron’s Cabinet. But there are vast policy differences – notably on voting reform – to overcome, and huge sentimental differences within both parties.

Such a deal would have to offer great returns for Mr Clegg, because he would be allying himself to a party which, initially at least, will be desperately unpopular, raising taxes and cutting public sector jobs, as it tackles the deficit.

After the February 1974 election, Edward Heath took four days negotiating with Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe before he concluded there could be no Con/Lib coalition and stepped aside for Harold Wilson. In 2010, negotiations could, in theory, drag on until the Queen’s Speech on May 25.

THE fourth option is the most likely: some form of informal agreement. The Lib/Lab Pact between James Callaghan and David Steel kept Labour in power in 1977-1979. Nothing was signed; the Liberals merely agreed not to bring down the government.

Mr Cameron signalled yesterday that a “confidence and supply” arrangement could be thrashed out in which the Lib Dems would keep him in power and ensure his Budget – “supply”

– was passed in return for Liberal measures.

Finally, thankfully, there is no need to talk about the BNP – they polled about two per cent of the vote.

But there is need to talk about Britain’s antiquated voting system. Turnout was 65 per cent – up on 2005’s 61.3 per cent – but not enormous, yet some polling stations were scandalously overwhelmed.

Still, these are fascinating times. On the one hand, we face a new form of European-style coalition government which may bring an end to old-style Punch and Judy politics. On the other, the pressures of coalition could tear both the Conservatives and Lib Dems apart and plunge us into a second election.

The British people will not fancy the latter any more than the penniless political parties and the nearly bankrupt economy. In fact, in the unpredictable, patchwork 2010 election, the people may well have been sending their politicians an order not to get hung up on working together to get the country out of its current mess.