The lastest polls in Britain show that Liberal Democratic party jumping into second place, which may be a momentary blip or something far, mor interesting This shows why the British/Canadian system is totally flawed..
more below the fold.
Great Britain is turning into Canada. If things go the way they seem, and it very well may not, there's going to be a minority government or even a coalition. But things are going to be totally screwed up. Consider the latest YouGuv poll: which according to the BBC has The Conservatives at 37% Labour at 31, The Liberal Democrats at 22 and everyone else at 10. This is very strange indeed, as everybody else, including YouGov says the poll shows the Torys 33%, the LDP up 8 points to 30%, and Labour down to 28.
Now exactly why the Beeb would put fraudulent numbers on its website after actually doing an article about the right numbers elsewhere on the same site is a mystery. Most of the other sites have mysteriously stopped updating their poll-watch sites so it appears the LDP is still stuck in the teens. Another polling company, ComRes/ITV, has the Torys ahead of the LDP by only one point, 36-35, with Labour at a mere 24%.
For some reason, they're trying to suppress this poll too.
but let's say the YouGov poll for today is spot on, the BBC voteshare calculator said that it would mean that Labour, which is in third place would get 276 seats, the Torys, who came in first would get 245 and the LDP a mere 100 and the Nationalists being almost wiped out.
Now consider what that would mean: Queen Elizabeth II would be forced to ask Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the leader of a party which only got 28% of the vote and came in third, to form a government. He would not only have no majority, he would have no mandate whatsoever. He would have to ask either Nick Clegg, the LDP leader to help him out. Now why would Clegg do that? Cabinet seats and a deputy prime ministership for himself, perhaps? No cabinet seats at all wouldn't do, especially since they did better than Labour. Maybe the Nats wouldn't be wiped out, and the Scottish Nationals would demand the UK be broken up as the price of their support? Brown is a Scot, you know.
Perhaps the LDP and the Torys might negotiate a deal behind Brown's back, and after Brown gives up in disgust Cameron and Clegg might be given the go ahead for forming a government. It might be that the LDP surge has poisoned the atmosphere between the three parties so much that they refused to work together.
What is Her Majesty to do? Might the reserve powers kick in and she actually try to help form a government herself? She nearly had to do that in 1974, and in 1931 her grandfather forced a coalition with all three of the major parties, none of whom were very happy about it.
Then there's the prorogation crisis in Canada a year or so ago, when the majority of the parliaimentarians tried to depose the government and failed spectacularly. Britain could end up with something like that with Brown or Cameron at the helm. Things might get very interesting.