‘Nightmare on Downing Street’ looms

Afrom London lbertans voted strongly to go in a new political direction on Tuesday. British voters cannot seem to agree about anything as they merrily march towards a political quagmire in Thursday’s general election.

What is in prospect is a hung Parliament that will either be led by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron or Labour Leader Ed Miliband and that will be beholden to either Scottish separatists intent on breaking up the United Kingdom or to a patchwork of small parties with narrow interests.

The situation is so confused that when the polls close, even figuring out who got what, let alone the coalition permutations that may be required to form the next government in Westminster, may not be known until sometime on Friday — with two weeks of horse trading and bartering between the various elected factions likely after that.

“Nightmare on Downing Street” read The Daily Telegraph’s alarmist front page election eve summary of the campaign. A BBC commentator likened the election result coming Thursday to the halftime whistle in a soccer match with the second half to be played before Christmas. Another general election before the end of the year was also the prediction of Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg, whose party was part of a Conservative-led coalition government after the last election five years ago.

The campaign has essentially been between rightwing parties preaching austerity and left-wing parties promising more government spending on education and health care. But polls have shown that voter sentiment has barely moved throughout the campaign except in Scotland where the Scottish National Party, which is well to the left of Labour, is poised to win half the popular vote and most if not all of the 59 seats.

If the SNP does so, it will be in a far more powerful position than the Bloc Québécois has ever had in Ottawa. That will inevitably bring separatist Quebec politicians to Edinburgh to see how the SNP has managed this feat, just as the SNP previously sent emissaries to Ottawa and Quebec City to get tips from the Bloc and Parti Québécois.

Nicola Sturgeon, the feisty SNP leader and the most influential new voice in British politics since Margaret Thatcher, has made it plain she will have no truck with the Tories. She has been equally emphatic that Labour’s Miliband will have to deal with her if he is to become the next prime minister.

There is an even more toxic ingredient in this strange electoral brew. The United Kingdom Independence Party — which will win more of the popular vote than the SNP but may only take one or two seats because its vote is spread out across hundreds of constituencies in England — is well to the right of the Tories and is taking votes that Cameron badly needs to have any hope of forming a majority government.

The UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, is so charming and easygoing that many of his English compatriots might fancy sharing a pint with him at the local pub. But Farage is also a hardliner who has forced the Tories to veer further right to try to keep its usual traditional base by demanding that Britain quit the European Union and that action be taken to drastically cut the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have poured in from the EU’s poorer eastern countries and from Asia, the Middle East and Africa over the past few years.

The UKIP has provided the campaign’s most astonishing and nastiest moment. One of its candidates, Robert Blay, was secretly filmed at an event for Farage on Tuesday as he threatened to “personally put a bullet between the eyes” of a Conservative rival of East Asian descent because he was “not British enough to be in our Parliament.” Farage suspended Blay, but not before he also accused Ranil Jayawardena of intentionally timing his wife’s pregnancy to gain votes during the campaign.

With a political deadlock looming between the two traditional ruling parties, both Cameron and Miliband, and the news outlets that back them in Britain’s highly partisan media culture, have been beseeching voters to give them a majority.

“For sanity’s sake don’t let a class-war zealot and the SNP destroy our economy — and our nation,” the Daily Mail pleaded Wednesday in an apocalyptic white-onblack front page headline.

Polls show the Tories inching slightly ahead of Labour and poised to win between 280 and 290 seats. Unless Cameron gets more than 290 seats, it is hard to see how he can remain in power, as Clegg’s Liberal Democrats are expected to lose at least half of the 56 seats they had at dissolution.

If the pollsters are right, and their voter soundings have all been consistent for the past month, Labour will elect between 260 and 270 MPs. Even with SNP support, that might not get them to the magic figure of 326 votes The U.K. appears headed for a hung Parliament after Thursday’s election. Here’s a look at what that means: A hung Parliament occurs when no single party receives a majority of the seats. In the case of Westminster, that means 326 seats. If no party receives a majority, the incumbent government remains in place, and can attempt to form a workable coalition with other parties. If it becomes clear, however, that that government cannot gain the confidence of the House, and that a viable alternative exists, the prime minister is expected to tender his or her resignation to the Queen. In 2010, David Cameron’s Conservatives won the most seats, but came up short of a majority. Talks between Labour incumbent Gordon Brown and the third-place Liberal Democrats were unsuccessful, while Cameron’s Conservatives were able to strike a deal. Five days after the election, Brown left 10 Downing Street and drove to Buckingham Palace to resign. One hour later, Cameron was sworn in as prime minister, and the following day details of the deal with the Liberal Democrats were revealed.

Given the uncertainty, it is possible a constitutional crisis could emerge after

the vote

Another option would be to attempt to run a minority government, cobbling together support on a vote-by-vote basis. Cameron would have first shot, but if the SNP and Labour have the seats to topple his government, he would be unlikely to attempt it. Absent a formal coalition, Labour could also attempt to govern as a minority. in Parliament, forcing them to make side deals with minor Irish and Welsh parties and with one or two Green or independent MPs.

Given the uncertainty, it is possible a constitutional crisis could emerge after the vote. In that case, figuring out how to proceed would be like a journey without maps: Unlike Canada, the U.K. has no written constitution with a formula to resolve such a crisis.