Alex Massie

No electoral system is perfect. First Past the Post has its advantages and it's a mistake to suppose that switching to the Alternative Vote or multi-member constituencies elected by STV solves all problems. On the contrary it probably replaces one set of difficulties with another. Nevertheless, one wonders how sustainable FPTP is. Traditionally it has done a pretty good job of corralling extremism and producing more-or-less coherent governments that can command a majority in the House of Commons (and that can be unceremoniously turfed-oot once they've outlived their usefulness). Unfortunately - and increasingly - those governments enjoy only minority support in the country-at-large.

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.

It's a gaffe, of course, because it is both true and something you're not supposed to say. Be this as it may, it strikes me that while political professionals and grizzled foreign policy specialists may chunter about the Liberals' naivete and the rest of it, the general public will be less likely to complain that the party opposed to attacking Iran is the dangerous, mad party that can't be trusted. Both views, for sure, have some merit. And so do Brother Korski's questions: What would the Lib Dems do if negotiations fail? Negotiate some more? So what happens if the International Community agrees to military action? What would Nick Clegg do if diplomacy fails and Iran acquires a bomb, which it uses as a shield to protect Hezbollah, as the Shiite movement attacks Israel?

Well this was entirely predictable. The authoritarian right insist that Dave's efforts at making the Tory party electable are in fact what has prevented the party from storming to a landslide victory. We'll be hearing a lot more of this nonsense if the Tories fail to win a majority but Melanie Phillips's most recent post is a decent enough starting place and summary of the argument. Naturally she quotes Norman Tebbit at length and, presumably, it's only a matter of time befre Simon Heffer and the others weigh-in too. Of course this analysis conveniently ignores the fact that it's the manifest, obvious, failure of the right that has left Cameron in such a difficult position.

You English, sometimes you are the crazy people. Here's Iain Dale for instance, dismissing any notion of a Tory-Liberal arrangement: All coalitions end in failure, the partners don't agree, postponement and indecision become the order of the day. Britain today does not need a two-headed donkey. This, as anyone with any knowledge of politics anywhere else could tell you, is piffle. It's not even true of British politics. Few people would argue that the Labour-Liberal coalition at Holyrood was one of democracy's grander moments but it wasn't obviously worse than, say, a majority Labour ministry might have been and it was, in fact, all too stable and all too able to get things done. Not good things, you understand but definitely things anyway.

And not in a Cleggover* or Rentoul-bait sense either. No, you remember The Candidate? Of course you do for you enjoy political movies as much as we do. Which means you'll also remember the movie's strapline: Too Handsome. Too Young. Too Liberal. Doesn't have a chance. He's PERFECT! And you'll also recall the movie's final line, delivered after Redford's character wins an unlikely victory: What do we do now? It was never clear that Redford had an answer to this and nor, frankly, is it obvious that Nick Clegg does either. Again and at the risk of repeating myself, how can Clegg be the "Agent of Change" if, once the election hurly-burly is done with he pivots to support a minority Labour ministry?

I don't really know if the Tories "Vote Clegg, get Brown" argument will work but if I had to bet on it I'd guess that it won't. There's a large enough constituency out there that doesn't want either the Tories or Labour. Nevertheless, the post-election environment now becomes very interesting. Suppose, just for now, that Labour come third in the popular vote but actually win the most seats. What happens then? And this could happen. Consider this scenario: Tories 33%, Labour 28%, Lib Dems 29% - according to Electoral Calculus and, admittedly, on a crude national and uniform swing, this could produce a result something like Tories 258, Labour 265, Liberals 95.

That would be Scotland, of course. Dear old Scotia, meek and mild and quiet as a well-nursed child. There was another YouGov poll released at the weekend and this Scotland on Sunday survey had its own startling findings. To wit: Labour - 40% SNP - 20% Lib Dems - 19% Tories - 16% Others - 5% You read that correctly. After 13 years and the worst fiscal apocalypse in 70 years 40% of my compatriots will still, like so many zombies, endorse the Labour party just as their faither did before them and, god knows, perhaps his faither before him too. True, this poll may slightly under-estimate currrent levels of Lib Dem support since half of it was conducted before last week's debate.

Ross Douthat uses his New York Times column today to update Manhattanites on the British election. As you might expect, Ross is broadly supportive of Cameronism and goes so far as to call it "a more detailed and specific vision of what conservative reform might mean than almost any English-speaking politician since the Reagan-Thatcher era." However: Even if they manage to pull out a win, the Tories will have to actually execute the transformation that they’ve promised. Here the American experience is not encouraging. From Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, almost every modern Republican president has pledged to decentralize government and empower local communities. But their successes have tended to be partial, and their failures glaring.