Rochester is not a freak. It has given us a glimpse of what bookies now believe to be the lost likely outcome of the next election: that no one wins. I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column today.
‘All bets are off,’ said Nigel Farage after Mark Reckless prevailed in yesterday’s by-election. But that’s not quite right: bets are being made, and the balance of money points to ‘no overall control’. That is to say: a Prime Minister too unpopular to win a majority, and too toxic to be able to form a coalition. A minority government that can’t call an early election thanks to the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act and will have to implement cuts far deeper and more painful than any implemented so far (remember, we’re not even halfway through the fiscal consolidation, due to the lamentably slow progress of spending reform).
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