The Race Begins

Nearly a week in and already things are hotting up. My prediction is that after a couple of weeks of slow haemorrhaging of the Labour vote, there will be a last minute swing stampede from the LibDems to the Tories, who will win an overall majority of 35-40 seats.

A number of factors dictate this eventuality. First, Nick Clegg made a statement a couple of weeks back in which he more or less ruled out the possibility of the LibDems going into coalition with the Conservatives, so the electorate basically has a choice of Tories or Labour-plus-someone else. While those who support the LibDems for ideological reasons will likely stick with their principles, those who don't like the Tories but think that another five years of Gordon Browns hamfisted management of the economy would be disastrous are likely to see Clegg's speech as meaning that a vote for the LibDems will have precisely that result and will hold their noses and vote Tory. We saw something similar in 1992 - Labour were ahead in the polls in an election I planned to abstain from, but a last minute vision of Kinnock standing in the doorway to number 10, grinning and waving like an orang-utan in a cheap suit, forced me to vote Tory. (It also had the added pleasure of making the man who held his victory parade 2 days' before the poll was actually held look something of a prat.)

In addition to this, I confidently predict there will be widescale electoral fraud involving postal ballots. Most of this will be in Birmingham, with added pockets in Manchester, Leicester and Bradford. Some will involved ballots taken from people by their "community leaders" (read into that what you will) while others will be intercepted and sold to these "electoral agents" by bent posties. Expect re-counts and acrimony, and I will add that most, but not all, of these frauds will benefit the Labour party.

Just a hunch, you understand.