Don’t panic — a hung parliament might be good

Although I have been a reader of The Spectator almost since I have been in short trousers I have rarely been as irritated by an article as I was by last week’s cover story, ‘Britain must be saved from the financial abyss’. Its author, Allister Heath, is by no means a lone voice: he speaks for a considerable number of vocal, if unrepresentative people in the City who believe a hung parliament would mean weak government and fiscal peril. This view is profoundly mistaken.

The implication of this argument is that, even to Conservative voters, a Labour victory would be preferable to a House of Commons where neither of the two main parties has an overall majority. It would then follow that, in a constituency where the Lib Dems — or any other minor party — has a chance of prevailing over Labour, a Conservative voter should vote Labour to minimise the chances of a ‘hung parliament’.