As everyone knows, anything couold happen in this election.   But some scenarious are intriguing:

1   If Clegg can hold his own in the second debate, aided further by significant new registrations to vote up to today’s deadline especially by younger persons intending to vote Lib Dem, he could find himself atop a commanding third bloc of seats in the Commons with neither of the two main parties close to an overall majority.   He could then:

either (i)  refuse to join either of the two bigger parties and seek to constrain a minority government in the direction of key concessions to Lib Dem policy,

or (ii) throw his weight behind whichever party gained the most seats, but only on the basis of certain concessions, particularly electoral reform.

Either way the country would be moving towards a more pluralistic or proportionally representative system.

2   If the Tories won the largest number of seats in a hung Parliament, it is assumed they could form a minority government with the sole aim of choosing the earliest moment for a second election to secure the majority denied to them the first time.   But given the difficult (and maybe worsening) economic background and their own strong commitment to cutting the deficit quickly largely through swingeing public expenditurte cuts, this might prove much more problematic than first envisaged.

3   If the Tories emerged with the largest percentage of the vote and the Lib Dems with the second largest or a close third, but Labour because of the distortions of the voting distribution won the most seats, the pressure for electoral reform would be irresistible – and not just AV which could actually exacerbate the unfairness of the result.

4   If in a tight 3-horse race there was a move by the elites of all 3 parties to keep power to themselves by establishing a government-of-all-the-talents, it could unleash an explosion among electors who believed that the manifest desire for change had been thwarted by an unholy alliance of just the kind of discredited scheming that they were determined to bring to an end.

Whichever way it goes, a crack has appeared in the political carapace which sooner or later looks likely to broaden into a fissure opening up the re-alignment of the Left which at present is overwhelmingly the missing element in an otherwise trite and stagnant political landscape.

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