Ed Miliband has claimed that there is no way he would lead his party in a coalition with the SNP. As my colleague Andrew Sparrow blogged:
Miliband says there has been a lot of talk of coalitions in recent weeks. But there won’t be a Labour coalition with the SNP.
Miliband said that he is interested in a coalition with the people, and that the election is a choice between a Labour government and a Tory one.
Is this true?
A coalition – technically defined as a government with ministers of both parties – between Labour and the SNP is highly unlikely, and both parties have in fact ruled one out.
However, some form of post-election pact between the two parties is a different matter altogether. On Sunday, the SNP candidate for Gordon and former party leader, Alex Salmond, said his party would probably have a “vote-by-vote arrangement” with a minority Labour government.
Both Labour and the Conservatives are understandably pitching the 7 May vote as a straight choice between the UK’s two main parties. After all, coalitions in Westminster are historically the exception.
But the problem with all this is quite simple: reality.
What do the polls tell us?
As things stand, both Miliband’s party and the Tories will not only fall well short of a majority, but whoever between the two is to form a government will most probably need the support of multiple parties to do so.
Based on current polls, Labour is projected to win 270 seats, the Conservatives 276, the SNP 53 and the Liberal Democrats 25.
There are 45 days to go to the election, and lot can of course still happen – not least the debates and related interviews and Q&As.
However, past elections show that the chances of public opinion moving enough between now and polling day to secure either Miliband or Cameron enough seats to form a majority government are extremely low.
On 280-290 seats both main parties would need to do a deal with other parties if they are to form a government that wins a confidence vote in the House of Commons.
Scotland is currently the focal point of the Conservatives’ “wedge strategy”, an approach aimed at focusing on a divisive issue – and the Tories’ attacks on a possible Labour-SNP deal are expected to intensify in the coming weeks.
The Conservatives claim that where they provide a stable government, a vote for Labour would lead to a chaotic mess of different parties. But the fact of the matter is that to stay in Downing Street, Cameron would probably need to rely on the votes of the Lib Dems, Ukip and the DUP.
The shape of the new government
We can call them coalitions, alliances, pacts, confidence and supply arrangements, but semantics and technicalities aside, it is looking increasingly the case that once all ballots will have been counted, the feasible scenarios will be between different combinations of parties – each with its own priorities, demands and ideas.
Miliband and Cameron are inevitably attempting to get the public to focus on the two main parties and who will lead the country after the election – and in doing so are ruling out all other options.
However, the polls say they are highly unlikely to do it on their own. Interestingly, there are suggestions that the country is fine with that. Fewer than two-thirds of voters want either side to win an absolute majority, according to a YouGov poll published in January.
