Tories eye deal with DUP

The Financial Times (registration required) is reporting that a deal with the Liberal Democrats is the Conservative Party's second preference. They would rather pusue a deal with the DUP, SNP and Plaid Cmyru. On the central issue of public spending:

"...any support would be to protect their parts of the UK from the worse effects of any spending cuts - a tough demand on a government looking to reduce the £163bn deficit. But Mr Cameron's team believe it may be preferable to doing a deal with Nick Clegg's Lib Dems, who say that electoral reform would be the price of any post-election pact."

This implicitly undermines the Ulster Unionist and Conservative relationship even further. It also leaves a key local negative message against the DUP. It is hard to scaremonger about a hung parliament never mind the SNP if CCHQ seems to prefer such an outcome. The article also highlights that:

"The Tories also work closely with the SNP in the Scottish Parliament".

It predicts that:

"...the Democratic Unionists, the largest party in Northern Ireland with nine MPs, could use its muscle during debate over the Budget to extract concessions."

Are the markets frit?

In his UTV interview at the Ulster Unionist and Conservatives manifesto launch, Sir Reg Empey claimed that the markets would react negatively to a hung parliament. This parrots Tory claims at a national level. However, as Guido Fawkes points out, the markets seem to be taking a different view to Tory predictions. Since a hung parliament developed as a real election outcome the markets have actually moved in a positive direction.

Minority and coalition governments can work

Peter Riddell of the Times offers an examination of a hung parliament looking at other European examples:

"If you look away from Westminster, single-party governments are the exception. Apart from Britain, there are only three in the EU: France, Malta and that paragon of good governance, Greece. Many countries most highly rated for good government, such as Germany, New Zealand and the Scandinavian nations have multi-party rule...Moreover, multi-party administrations have been as effective in maintaining fiscal discipline as single-party ones...The classic example is Sweden in the mid-1990s which had a budget deficit of around 12 per cent of national income, similar to Britain now. The Social Democrats elected in 1994 were in a minority but pushed through a tough deficit-reduction programme that slashed the stock of public debt by a half in a decade. Göran Persson, initially the finance minister, justified the cuts in a country dedicated to generous welfare provision by the slogan “those who are in debt are not free”. He became Prime Minister in 1996 and survived as head of a minority administration until 2006."

Canada, Crisis and a Hung parliament

UCUNFers are getting hot under the collar about the issue of a hung parliament. Events can be troublesome things for the central narrative of a campaign so at present it is not easy to sell being 'at the heart of government' when polls show being 'at the heart of the opposition' equally if not more likely.

David Cameron returned again to the theme of a hung parliament warning that it could lead to economic and political stagnation. It certainly could lead to political stagnation for the Conservatives. If a Labour Lib Dem coalition is the result of this election and they reform the electoral system it would be highly likely the Tories would be out of government for two parliamentary terms (based on past voting trends). Although those who think it would lead to a 'permanent' shift are probably over-stating the case as voting patterns will adapt to the new system. Labour expected they'd be the 'permanent' government of Scotland and Wales under devolution and that was quickly disproved.

As regards economic stagnation is it worth noting that Canada has managed to find a course through the economic difficulties while being governed by a minority Conservative administration?

Cameron admits a hung parliament is on

The immediate answer to whether the election debates would have an impact has been answered with the sustainability of the impact now the issue. There were two possible forewarnings that this was possible. First, in previous campaigns the Lib Dem poll rating usually grew during an election campaign as they got more exposure during a campaign, the debates raised the level of exposure to a whole new level. Second, the psephologist John Curtice had highlighted some time ago that shifts from Labour to Tories were soft switchers, while they said they would vote Tory they would not describe themselves as Tory identifiers. This lack of close identification meant they had the potential to switch again. This lack of 'conversion' has also been the core failure of Cameron's period as Tory leader. However while it was possible I doubt if anyone considered it probable.

These dramatic shifts have led to David Cameron admitting that a hung parliament is a real possibility, while of course warning against it. This won't be an necessarily easy sell as other polling shows a lack of public fear of a hung parliament.