Five More Years

The delaying of the meeeting of the new Parliament is playing into Brown's hands, as it was intended to do.  Had he had to meet the Parliament within days there could have been no possibility of getting through a Queen's Speech.  But while the negotiations drag on an unlikely and unstable Queen's Speech alliance of rag tag and bobtail 'parties', plus some Liberal Democrats who will break ranks in the vote to help towards a majority, beckons.   If all of the Liberal Democrats can be tempted on board that will make it easier and carrots will be offered to achieve it.   The fissiparous nature of the LibDems    provides opportunity for the threats Brown also made in his phone call offer to Clegg.  The Liberal Democrats will split over a Queen's Speech crafted to split them if they do not ally with New Labour.

Further devolution, difficult to stop anyway, will be enough for the celtic nationalists and, as Ken Clarke withered, you can always do a deal with an Ulsterman though it's never the basis for stable government.   The Green will have rings run round her, why she could even have a little post and office of her own, that should do it.

Then there is the righteousness of letting Parliament decide.  You can just hear the sound of that weird accent practising mouthing the self-justifying words:  we are a parliamentary democracy and it is right that the Parliament elected by the people on 6 May should  decide openly  who leads us in these troubled economic times.  No time for a novice, saved the world, have been getting on with the job, wide support across many parties, stability not change, is needed.

There will be a lot of very nasty detail emerging on the rigging of the polls but that did no harm to George Bush holding power and keeping it, and there won't be any need for it again as the system itself will be rigged in good time for the next 'election'.

The Conservatives had better support their leadership fullheartedly in whatever it judges necessary to concede to get to be the party that presents the Queen's Speech, or  any chance to do so as Conservatives will never come again.