Can anything save us from this constitutional car crash?

The latest predictions from The Guardian for the outcome of the UK general election will occupy the dreams of political scientists and the nightmares of politicians. The figures speak of a constitutional crisis. A stalemate in which a most unlikely coalition would need to be formed in order to produce a majority government.

If these numbers were reflected in the poll on May 7^th, the only mathematically plausible option is for Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats to forge a three-way alliance.

The disgraced former minister Chris Huhne rightly points out that the fixed-term parliaments may tend to favour coalition rather than minority government. But that presupposes there really is a workable coalition. I see this ScotLibLab pact as being something that might possibly be agreed on paper out of desperation, but which would be inherently unstable from hour one. Trident, tuition fees, the history of recent animosity. It’s a recipe for absolute chaos.

Of course, it’s the SNP who have put the marauding, predatory cat among the puffed-up pigeons of the London establishment. Who would have thought that a referendum which the nationalists lost would subsequently give them the whip hand at Westminster? But in The Guardian’s poll, it is they who will prevent Labour from having the automatic claim to form a government and make a mockery of the complacency too many in the Labour hierarchy had about the benefits of the electoral system.

The position of all the party leaders is extremely precarious. If Cameron fails to win an overall majority for the Tories, I really think he is history. There are too many right-wingers who see his coalition government as weak-willed and unnecessary. They have been biting their tongues to a certain extent, but will sink their teeth elsewhere after the election.

The Labour Party will be kinder to Miliband, but only if he succeeds in making Labour the largest force in Parliament. Unfortunately, thanks to the SNP, The Guardian predicts that he won’t even manage that. He will survive only as long as he is a credible contender for Prime Minister.

Nick Clegg might cling on to his tightly-fought seat of Sheffield Hallam, although there are people who understandably pray for a student revolution and a ‘Portillo moment’.

If we imagine he survives, he’ll have more MPs than some people suppose. That’s because the Lib Dems (despite their long-standing support for electoral reform) have played the first-past-the-post system very well and have entrenched their vote in some key constituencies. In my own area, I imagine that Vince Cable will survive, for example, even though the Tories control the local council and are hopeful of ousting him.

But Clegg will be a busted flush. The Lib Dems will know he’s poison when it comes to any negotiations with Labour and the SNP, so a third coup d’état is surely in the offing.

Of course, there is a lot of water to flow under Westminster Bridge. Slight fluctuations in the percentage figures could shift the arithmetical balance. All it might take is a relatively small thing that moves the polls by a couple of points. A particularly strong or weak performance in the election debates, for instance, assuming they go ahead. Or a policy initiative that has some genuine stand-out value.

Peter Kellner of YouGov said today that he feels the Labour pledge to cut tuition fees to £6,000 could potentially swing the vote Miliband’s way in nine constituencies. Under normal circumstances, this might be hardly worth the effort. But in 2015, who knows?

Miliband did well, I thought, on the latest cash-for-access scandal. Despite former Jack Straw’s involvement alongside Malcolm Rifkind, the Labour leader managed to turn it into a here-and-now question: do we stop outside interests or don’t we? As a result, Cameron was left bleating unconvincingly about people running family businesses and looking hopelessly out of touch with the public mood.

Will issues of parliamentary probity make a difference? Or do the electors already think ‘a plague on all your houses’? The attack on tax avoidance didn’t seem to land a killer punch.

My feeling is that in the final weeks of the campaign, each of the two major party leaders will be looking for that tiny piece of good fortune that will make a difference of 10 or 15 or 20 seats. If it proves elusive, Labour and the Tories will retreat into their well-established comfort zones of the NHS and the economy respectively. May 7^th will roll around and we’ll be in for a very rocky ride.

After more than 30 years, I leave Labour at 11.46am tomorrow.

Barring some kind of minor miracle - on a par perhaps with CETI announcing first contact with the Vulcans or the Great British Bake Off returning to the BBC – Jeremy Corbyn will be re-elected on Saturday as Leader of the Labour Party. The announcement is due at around 11.45 am. So after three decades or so of membership, my association with the party will end at 11.46. Yes, that’s all folks. I’m afraid I really do mean it this time. Party card in the shredder. Standing order cancelled. It’s goodnight from me. And it’s goodnight Vienna from Labour. I threatened to quit when the Jezster was first elected, but people persuaded me to stay on in the hope that the situation could be rescued. I wanted to go when Angela Eagle was unceremoniously dumped in favour of Owen Smith, but was told I couldn’t desert at such a critical moment and should rally behind the PLP’s chosen challenger. Stay and fight, my friends say. But over what? The burnt-out shell o

Time for Red Ken to head into the sunset

Voice for 2012: Oona best represents modern Londoners Pin there, done that: Livingstone's campaign is a throwback to the 1980s Ken Livingstone may have lost his grip on power, but he hasn’t lost his chutzpah. The former London mayor was full of chirpy bluster a week ago in Southall, west London, when I popped over to listen to him debate with his rival for the current Labour nomination, Oona King. The contrast between two candidates couldn’t be more striking. Oona is chic, whereas Ken is pure cheek. She talks passionately about the threat posed by gang warfare which currently divides kids in her East London neighbourhood, while he waxes nostalgically about his working-class childhood in post-war council housing. It’s clear that Livingstone has been cryogenically preserved and then defrosted. The only question is when exactly the wily old geezer was put in the freezer. The mid-1980s would be a fair bet, which is when I remember him on a stage in Jubilee Gardens on the south bank

The friends, the facilitators and the failures. They now owe us all an apology.

I keep hearing Corbyn’s tenure referred to as an experiment. But how many experiments continue for four years, despite a toxic chemical haze billowing out of the mad inventor’s lab? The hard-left project should have been stopped in its tracks countless times. As far back as 2015, Joe Haines – Harold Wilson’s Press Secretary – suggested that the Parliamentary Labour Party should make a unilateral declaration of independence. They could have appointed their own leader in Parliament and bypassed the socialist relic the members had chosen to elect. Instead, they prevaricated. They agonised. They muttered to each other in corridor recesses at Westminster. The frightened bunnies were at first bemused and disoriented, allowing Corbyn and his cabal to consolidate their position. And subsequently, they were frightened. Mainly frightened of the swollen membership of three-quid flotsam and jetsam who had invaded their constituencies pledging allegiance to the sage of the allotments

Sea Change

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