Between a rock and a hard place

May 5th (Liberation day here) and the UK General Election have come and gone. A pair of late nights - although the general election is not over yet. I cheered madly when I saw the Greens get the first ever MP under the unfair First Past The Post system. I was hoping for a hung parliament but never dreamed what a constitutional mess it would create. The LibDems have a real dilemma. One options is to get into bed with the Tories - who won the most votes and seats but can't form a government by themselves. This I guess would alienate some 75% of LiBDem voters - unless they saw it as being a marriage of convenience -and would alienate Tories and Labour voters if it were one. But there are too many policy differences - on Europe, taxation, immigration and defence for this to work well. Equally the Tories are heavily opposed to any form of PR (though may give way) as this would undermine their future chances of being a ruling party. The alternative of going with Labour, more attractive to most LibDem sympathisers, runs several different risks. The first is being seen by the press as shoring up a 'failed' government and leader (though the latter issue is less now that Gordon Brown has announced his resignation as PM). But above all the numbers don't add up. It would take a Rainbow Alliance (Lab, Lib Dem, the Democratic Unionists, SNP, Plaid and the Green) to push anything through and one couldn't guarantee the support of everyone (particularly the SNP). Mark reckons has blogged on this dilemma more extensively