I don’t really know if the Tories “Vote Clegg, get Brown” argument will work but if I had to bet on it I’d guess that it won’t. There’s a large enough constituency out there that doesn’t want either the Tories or Labour.
Nevertheless, the post-election environment now becomes very interesting. Suppose, just for now, that Labour come third in the popular vote but actually win the most seats. What happens then? And this could happen. Consider this scenario: Tories 33%, Labour 28%, Lib Dems 29% – according to Electoral Calculus and, admittedly, on a crude national and uniform swing, this could produce a result something like Tories 258, Labour 265, Liberals 95.
Now clearly this wouldn’t be any kind of actual vote for electoral reform but it would produce a post-election environment in which there was considerable enthusiasm for and momentum behind voting reform.
This being so one could imagine a situation in which a Labour minority government soldiered on for a year or so with tacit support from the Liberal Democrats until a new election was called and held on the same day as a referendum on some kind of PR system.
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