We set up a street stall in West Wickham yesterday (some of us in the photograph) and met a lot of people as they went about their Saturday shopping. In the afternoon I campaigned in the Woodland Way area – again in West Wickham.
Everyone to whom I spoke asked what I thought might be the General Election result and I couldn’t answer them. I simply don’t know. One way to judge is by glancing at the opinion polls which consistently put us level-pegging with Labour. Neither major party would get a majority in those circumstances. It is the constancy of that result across the months and in many different polls which makes me think they may not be far out.
Another way to judge the situation is by looking at what the bookies suggest. Funnily enough, using a methodology based on what money people are willing to bet, they have often been proved to have special insight too. For instance, William Hill suggests that the odds on a Conservative majority are 13/2 which means there is one chance in seven and a half of us getting one. Labour’s odds are 28/1 which implies they have one chance in twenty eight of getting a majority in their favour. So despite William Hill giving us a better chance than Labour the bookie doesn’t think any party will have a majority of House of Commons seats. I suppose the good news is that the bookie does think we will have more seats than Labour. So a hung parliament looks likely.
In such circumstances we will have two basic choices. The first is to try and run a minority government where we do not command enough votes in the Commons to put through legislation without at least tacit support from other parties. Historically such arrangements are doomed to failure and relatively quickly. The second is to cobble together a coalition and the only choices I can envisage involve the Liberal Democrats and the Democratic Unionist Party. Personally I am very unhappy about the prospect of another coalition but better that than to allow the other side to wreck all we have achieved I suppose.
I truly hope bother the opinion polls and bookies are wrong and that, even as voters put their cross on ballot papers next Thursday they make the right choice, confounding both opinion polls and the bookies, to give our country an effective Conservative majority government.