ELECTION DISTRACTION

The other day I finished reading The Informer by Craig Nova, and have just sent my review off to Karen of Euro Crime.

This gripping story is set in 1930 during those tumultuous years years leading up to the collapse of the Weimar Republic.

It was in the September 1930 Federal Election that an enormous political shift occurred with the NSDAP [Nazis] gaining 95 seats, and the vote was split:

SPD Social Democrats 24.5%

NSDAP Nazis 18.3%

KPD Communists 13.1%

Z Centre Party 11.8%

and so on through multiple parties down to the German-Hanoverian Party that received 0.4% of the vote and secured 3 seats.

Following the performance of their leader Nick Clegg in the tripartite television debate between the UK party leaders there are reports of polling that show the Liberal Democrats have moved into second place. The Conservative leader David Cameron and Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown apparently did not perform as well as Mr Clegg. With three parties obtaining almost equal percentages of the vote, a first past the post electoral system, and non-uniform constituency sizes we could be in for a strange result.

Therefore I have been playing around with the BBC Election seat calculator and if the voting is split:

Liberal Democrats 33.2%

Conservatives 31.7%

Labour 25.8%

Others 9.3%

The Parliamentary seats would be divided:

Liberal Democrat 139

Conservative 240

Labour 242

Others 29

Labour would finish third, but still be the largest party in the House of Commons, which would not be either healthy or a good advertisement for our democratic system.

We live in interesting times.

Experience teaches us that, generally speaking, the most perilous moment for a bad government is one when it seeks to mend its ways.

Alexis De Tocqueville