Post election poker games?

FOUR DAYS TO GO

Next Thursday the UK gets to vote in a General Election.  And, as in 2010, it appears to be heading for an uncertain and confusing outcome, but with far more in the way of complications, variables and permutations that was the case five years ago.  Then it was a fairly simple choice.  Would the Lib Dems hook up with the Tories, marginally the largest party in terms of seats, or with Labour, the incumbent government?  We know how that one went and what followed.

Now the arithmetic looks a lot more complicated.  If the polls are to be trusted, and there do appear to be a lot of undecideds out there who could confound predictions, then the two major parties will remain close in number of seats, but both well short of having a majority on their own.  Meanwhile the Lib Dems look set to be punished for their perfidy and lose at least half their seats.  Replacing them as the numerical third party (and already hitting that target in terms of party membership) will probably be the SNP.  Predictions for the number of seats they will win vary widely, right up to one poll suggesting they would take all fifty nine in Scotland.  I doubt that's going to happen, but around forty does seem entirely likely.  (There are stories that Labour has effectively given up on holding about thirty of their current forty one, the Lib Dems might only hang on to two or three out of eleven.  If the SNP also hold on to their existing seats that becomes an easy forty to forty five, more than two thirds of the seats in the country.)

And that may be the scenario the parties are going to have to deal with.  In spite of Ed Milliband's seeming refusal to want to face reality.  Cameron will get first go at forming a government, either as incumbent or, quite possibly, the largest party.  Where will he get the additional support he needs for a majority?  He can maybe count on the rump of the Lib Dems.  But if they have fallen below the thirty mark they will not be able to give him what he needs.  So then he has to look further to the right.  Primarily that means the homophobic DUP, who will probably have about eight MPs.  And, scraping the barrel still further, however many ukip candidates get returned.  But the polls only show that to be a figure between one and six, so they'd have little impact.

Cameron cannot look to the Progressive Alliance, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens, for none will have anything to do with the Tories (there are some in England who think Sturgeon would do anything if a referendum was offered, which only shows how limited their understanding of Scottish politics is).  And his only other option - one that's hard to conceive happening, but has to be considered - is a Grand Coalition with Labour.  How desperate do both sides have to be for that to happen?

Milliband's options look more realistic.  It's just his own words that aren't.  He could run a minority government with outside support garnered on a vote by vote basis.  That would come from the progressive parties, and perhaps even the Lib Dems (who'd be desperate to cling on to power one suspects).  A formal Lab/Lib government with the others providing the votes.

Except why should they just supinely vote for whatever Labour says they should - precisely what Scotland may have chosen to reject?  There are going to have to be trade offs, and I think the coming weekswill see one giant game of chicken taking place.  Labour think that the SNP wouldn't dare to vote down their Queen's Speech, else it would open the way for a Tory government.  Really?  The arithmetic will still remain against that happening, and losing the QS doesn't mean that Milliband has to resign.  It would take a vote of confidence for that to happen and the SNP might well decide to support him in that, and tell him to go away and think about a new budget.  And why shouldn't they?  That's how democracy works.  If Milliband wants SNP support he has to provide them with reasons to do so.  How could it, should, be otherwise?

Let the bluffing commence....