While we wait

Mucho debate and soul-searching will doubtless be going on among all the parties. All of them are tired, all - for various reasons - disappointed, and all must be torn between wanting to go home and catch up on some sleep and getting stuck in again to see what might be salvaged, what might be compromised, what is and isn't negotiable.

None of them will want to go back to the country too soon; no money, no energy, not much prospect of a radically different result.

I've been looking into different voting systems, since it seems likely that that's an issue that won't go away, much as the Conservatives would doubtless like to shove it into a dusty committee-room somewhere and bury it. If the LibDems have any sense - and the cojones - they'll keep that one active in return for their compromise elsewhere. Voting and electoral systems come in dozens of different variants, and there will have to be a thorough discussion about it. At the moment, I doubt if you could find one in fifty voters who could concisely and accurately explain the differences between pure proportional representation and, say, single-transferable vote (STV). I know I couldn't - a few minutes nosing round Wikipedia has shown me I haven't enough knowledge to make an informed choice on this if I were to be offered a choice in a referendum.

I do remember that back in my college days we used STV in our elections for the student representative council - a body I myself adorned for a year - and it can throw up some odd results, such as the time that the first round of voting for one council post returned Rosso (the vice-principal's dog) and RON (i.e. Re-Open Nominations) in first and second place. Sadly one of the more nerdy constitutional experts got Rosso struck out since he wasn't in statu pupillari. We did try to get that sorted, but it turned out he couldn't be in statu pupillari unless and until he could 'matriculate' and that required a certain minimum number of O-levels. Rosso was mad as a package of sprouts, and we got distracted by other things like sex and beer, so our cunning campaign for a new style of student politics ended up like all the others - dominated by nerdy constitutional experts who weren't getting enough sex and beer.

Obviously I exclude myself from that - I was in charge of Ents, a wonderful job involving crappy local bands with aggressive roadcrews, illicitly bypassing the noise limiter in the main hall and running discos when too drunk to stand up for more than half a minute at a time. Enough said.

But I digress. The differences between some of the available voting systems used elsewhere in the world are huge, with big consequences on, for example, the level of local representation that emerges. So we'll need to get up to speed on all this pretty soon, I think.

That will, however, be for another day. I'm going to rejoin the real world and head off for a friend's 40th birthday celebrations. If I don't make it to the other side, it's been nice knowing you.

The day thou gavest Gord is ended

It feels pleasantly debauched to be having a cup of coffee and a cigar in the garden at 04.10 in the morning. I've done it from both sides, as it were, over the years, but today it was with the benefit of at least some sleep first.

A fascinating day and more to come. OK, the five hours locked in a client meeting hammering out the fine detail of a management services provision contract were less than enthralling, but the other 14 that I've been on the go have been interesting. The blogosphere has been going mental, with reactions on a scale from 'subtle, measured, insightful' to 'urgent call for Nurse Desirée and two sturdy orderlies - bring tranquilisers and restraints'. All great fun, but now the mists are gathering. Alcohol, nicotine and fatigue toxins are having the same effect on me as reported by my fellow blogger in the pleasant land of Beestonia, so it's time for bed.

Leaders into temptation

Who'd be a party leader right now? They're all facing some very difficult choices and some very big risks. Who will have the stones, the luck and the chutzpah to make it through?

i-Dave came achingly close and turned in what you have to acknowledge is a good set of results. But the gap between the final position and power is no trivial one. He's made an intriguing offer to the LibDems - but can he carry his party with him? Many of them will find it hard to give anything away to a party they will see as a distant runner-up and with - on the face of their stated policies - far more in common with Labour than with the Tories. Some Conservatives will also be wondering whether Dave did in fact run the best campaign possible? Gratitude is a thin veneer in politics and although to my mind one of the triumphs of the Conservative campaign was to put the party across as unified, we all know that can change very rapidly.

The Cleggster succeeded personally in his constituency but Clegg-mania seems to have done nothing for his party's position - and may even have been counterproductive. So there will be a lot of disappointment and potentially dangerous feelings among his party. Because of the LibDem constitution, the leader is strictly limited in what he can do without formal authorisation. They do have the opportunity to win at least some of the aims of their manifesto, but all come at a price. If they strike a deal with the Tories, the coalition would have a clear majority. If they strike a deal with Labour - a more natural position, perhaps - there might well be more on the table, but more complications because of the numbers. The small parties would play pivotal roles, and the arrangement could hardly be stable. The LibDems might actually end up with less by going with an overtly more promising deal. A subtle and nuanced decision awaits Nick and his colleagues.

Gordon Brown too has a very tricky problem. Does he do a runner now, this afternoon, or does he wait for Lord Mandelmort to nod coldly to Ed Balls or David Milliband?

I'm rather glad that the most pressing decision for me today will be between a dry martini and gin and tonic. Or beer. Or red wine. Actually, perhaps a coalition might be the right way forward, right for our country, right for our people...

Incidentally - while it's clearly going to take a little while to sort out who's going to do over whom, every day puts about £400,000,000 on the national debt. So it would be good for agreements to be reached, and reached soon.

Some things don't seem to change, however

"The 1992 General Election was, we were told (yet again), to be the moment when the Liberal Democrats would stage their breakthrough from the periphery into the main ground of politics. But, for all the confident predictions, the number of people voting Liberal Democrat actually went down."

The Political Animal by Jeremy Paxman, 2002.

Interesting times

No clear picture of who will form the next Government as we stand at just after 6am. No change here in Rushcliffe - Tory big beast Ken Clarke back with a nigh-on 16,000 majority.

Jacqui Smith: gone. The Greens have their first Westminster MP.

Time for a cup of coffee.

A worrying thought

Mrs QO and I have had our go with the stubby pencils - good to see a queue at the polling station, though a little tedious to find another queue at the bar as soon as we'd got into the pub having done the democracy thing. Clearly democracy means the same to many of our neighbours as it does to us. Can't fault 'em, of course.

I was idly reviewing my blog posts and events of the last couple of days and a thought occurred to me. I mentioned the Greek financial crisis, and the next day three people were killed in the riots in Athens. Yesterday I made a passing reference to Nigel Farage, and today his plane crashed.

I do hope there isn't a 'Curse of the Quizzical Observer' at work. That would be terrible... I'd have to be so careful who I mentioned.

Anyway, I just wanted to have a word about Simon Cowell...

So... here we go

Election day tomorrow. I sort of intended to ignore the campaign as far as the blog went, but I couldn't help myself - I've got seriously interested. And my feeling is that the country has got more seriously interested this time too; there's a definite buzz in the air. That's a good thing for our country, whatever the result. It's like the old days when I were a nipper and everyone who wasn't a complete boring old numpty tuned into the Morecambe and Wise Show, then talked about it the next day. Only the jokes aren't quite so good, and I haven't seen Andre Previn on the stump, but you can't have everything.

Another good thing - and probably the root cause of the first - is that it seems as if real political shifts are taking place. Again, whatever the result, I think this is a healthy thing, and I may be able to park my plan to engage the electorate by paying celebrities to air political issues:

Britney Spears: "Oh, well, like, you know, I just adore i-Dave, he's like sooo on top of reducing the State and devolving power to local communities. And kinda cute, y'know?" *giggle*
Jedward: "Yup, Nick Clegg's our elder brother. He loves our music almost as much as he loves breaking the old two-party paradigm and offering a real political alternative. Vote for him and us!"
Coleen Rooney: "Eh, 'annit been a great season, laik, chuck? All we need now is for Gordon to get back into power and not threaten the economic recovery with hasty cuts in public spending. Gorraluvim!"
Lord Webber: "Nigel, you could be Dorothy."

Yeah, I know, that would be funnier if the Tories hadn't beaten me to it with Michael Caine. Oh well. Wha'eva.

Incidentally, make what you will of the order in which I placed the parties there, and the fact that some of them weren't included. You don't need a licence to receive Channel Observer, I don't have to give equal airtime to everyone, so suck it up. No overt statement from me, nor any endorsement of any candidate in any constituency should be inferred. OK, given that you'll know by now that I'm obsessing about cuts in public spending, you may have your suspicions. But that will - as far as the blog is concerned - remain a matter between my conscience and the ballot-box.

I will, though, make a heartfelt plea to anyone who reads this and is contemplating not voting to go out there and do so. Things are really, really serious out there, partly because too few of us have kept ourselves informed and made our voice heard to our representatives. Do what Mrs QO and I plan to do - go out around 6pm, exercise your mandate (big hairy thing, needs a lot of exercise), then bugger off to the pub.

Tomorrow, I shall stop being so pompous and pontificatory. I promise. Unless I found out you didn't vote, in which case... out you go, you're barred.