Election pt. 2: Why a Conservative government might not be such a bad thing...

The results of the 2010 election are in - it's a hung parliament. No party garnered enough votes to establish an overall majority, so now comes the agonising process of deliberation between the Conservatives (who gained the most seats), Labour (who lost a tonne of seats) and the Lib Dems (who, although losing seats and performing worse than expected after an initial wave of Cleggmania, now find themselves in the position of potential kingmakers).

With the largest share of the votes, and just shy of a majority, the Tories are firmly in the driving seat in terms of the formation of a new government. Although it's possible that the Lib Dems may choose to form a rag tag pro-PR coalition with Labour, the SNP and others, Clegg seems to have his heart set on trying to hammer out a deal with the Conservatives first.

However, given the two parties' almost diametrically-opposed views on almost everything (e.g. positions on Europe, Britain's Trident missile defence system, voting reform, etc.), any sort of Lib-Con alliance may prove to be short-lived. I'm willing to bet that power-mad former public relations man Cameron lures Clegg into coalition with the promise of a referendum on the electoral system, only for things to break down quickly once the promise fails to come to fruition. This would inevitably see the coalition stutter and another election would have to be called. This six months or so that Labour would have spent in opposition would give them a chance to rethink its policies, get a new, more camera-friendly leader (Dave Miliband is a near-certainty) and re-establish itself as the premier party of the Left in Britain.

This, however, might be wishful thinking. What would happen if the the Lib-Con coalition actually worked? Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, has explicitly stated that this upcoming government - whoever it may consist of - will be so deeply unpopular with the electorate, such is the huge scale of the cutbacks to public spending that will be required in the face of the national deficit, that they will be out of office for a generation. In this instance, Labour's time in opposition may be lengthened to four or five years, but they would almost certainly be guaranteed a landslide at the next election. On the plus side, the Tories would be absolutely dead and buried, their evil Death Star blown to smithereens (metaphor).

Whatever happens, it'll come good for the Left.