If you think that the election campaign has been a roller-coaster of surprises and shocks, just wait for the constitutional manoeuvrings which will begin at about 5am on Friday morning when the results of the election are beginning to become clear.   Assuming that the Tories don’t get an overall majority, i.e. a total of at least 326 seats or at least 130 more than they hold at present, several constitutional chasms will open up:

Crisis No.1

If there is any hope of doing a deal with Clegg to stay in power and if Clegg states, as he has already done, that (in addition to electoral reform) he will do a deal with Labour but not with Brown,  the Cabinet will likely have an early meeting on Friday and select another leader from among themselves. This will be done on the grounds that the existing leader has become ‘permanently unavailable’ (a situation allowed for in the Labour Party Rule Book to cover the contingency of crippling accident, mental ill-health or insuperable disablement). The question is what constitutional propriety the use of that procedure would have in the current scenario.

Crisis No.2

If this is challenged within the Labour Party, as is quite likely, what procedural modifications are necessary to introduce sufficient due process to ensure acceptance of the outcome?   It could, and probably will, be undertaken “in consultation with” the NEC.   But that body, which is largely controlled by the Labour establishment, is unlikely to do more than in effect rubber stamp the Cabinet lead.   What of the role of the new PLP?

I wrote before the dissolution to Tony Lloyd, the chair of the PLP, to seek assurances that the PLP would be fully involved in any decisions on the leadership after the election, and he assured me that that would be the case.   To ensure that happens, especially when a third or more of the PLP may be new members, will require some rapid footwork, but I intend to ensure it does happen.   Then there is the question of how the other arms of the Labour Movement, the CLPs and the unions, can to brought into the decision on the leadership to secure legitimacy.

A decision that in practical terms had to be made quickly in early May could be subject to ratification by due process in (say) June or at Conference in September, but by any standards that is cumbersome in the fast-moving mele’e of inter-party wrangling and is anyway unlikely to overturn a high-lelevl decision provisionally reached.

Crisis No. 3

The Tories will of course vigorously contest the constitutional convention, as recently enunciated by Gus O’Donnell, the Head of the Civil Service, that the incumbent Prime Minister has first right to try to form a new government.   They will insist that, if they have the most seats, they should have first bite, and the right-wind press will go mad about it on their behalf.   But what can they do to overturn the O”Donnell doctrine, other than appeal to the Queen, which won’t get them anywhere?

There is also the precedent of February 1974 when Heath, as incumbent Tory Prime Minister got a very slight majority of the vote (at 37.9% compared with 37.2% for Labour), but Labour won 301 seats to the Tories’ 297.   This time round however we may be contemplating Brown, as incumbent Labour Prime Minister, with more seats but a smaller percentage of the vote.   Is the number of seats or the proportion of the vote the dominant criterion?   It is arguable, but the precedent of 1974 makes it very difficult for the Tories to overthrow the current convention.

Crisis No.4

If this election has been all about change, a new politics, electoral fairness, and accountability, is it not likely that all of the preceding scenarios will simply yield more of the same rather than any real fundamental change?   New Labour will fix the leadership among themselves, whether Blairite or Brownite, but without any regard for how drastically New Labour has decimated the real Labour Party and without any wish or intention to deal with the profound malaise in Labour politics and policies.

Cameron is an old Etonian, a fomer member of the Oxford Bullingdon Club with probably natural Thatcherite instincts, but a total opportunist open to any device that will give him power.   Clegg has been a notable tribune of change and has unearthed the deep subterranean desire in the British people for a more wholesome, honest and democratic politics in this country, but in the last analysis he, Blair and Cameron are all peas in the same pod – aspirants for power at any price.   Conviction politcs, which Britain desperately now wants, is not born of such flexibility.

Revolutions are rarely sudden, and Thursday will only be the opening convulsions of a long-drawn-out drama of upheavals before a new political settlement is reached far ahead.

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