Saturday

Yesterday, to Oxford, for the annual dinner of the Maurice Lubbock Scholars at Balliol, the 53rd anniversary of the first award. Howard Davies and Malcolm Forrest, the first and second Scholars, were both there, and of course the more recent ones as well. The room we meet in, the old SCR, holds a maximum of 23, so it would be a problem if everyone turned up. Afterwards, back to Paddington on the 23.05, home at 01.00.

Today, no appointments for what seems like the first time since the election campaign started, and a chance to reflect on the outcome. After we were apparently on a plateau of 27-28% in the opinion polls, we actually got 23%, a consequence I suspect of the onslaught by the print media on us in the last week, and perhaps the classic third-party squeeze, making people think they are choosing between the two parties likely to form a government. It was still an improvement for us on the last general election, but perversely, a drop of 5 Commons seats to 57, fewer than half the 123 we would have got under fully proportional system. As the LibDem MPs met this afternoon, over 1,000 people demonstrated noisily outside demanding that Nick Clegg insist on electoral reform as a condition of any agreement with the Tories. There's a strong groundswell of opinion, not just among Liberal Democrat supporters, that we ought to go all out for electoral reform in any agreement with either Tories or Labour.

The probability must be that Cameron isn't in a position to deliver anything other than his offer of an all-party committee to look into the matter. We had already been round that loop years ago with the Jenkins Commission, whose report is gathering dust in some forgotten cupboard in Whitehall. So a coalition with the Tories seems improbable, with disagreements on other key policies including Europe, nuclear power, and immigration. Maybe there is still a chance of agreement on a more limited 'arrangement’ whereby the LibDems agree not to vote against the motion to approve the Queen's Speech and the Budget, while keeping their options open on measures introduced by the Tory Government.

If the negotiations with Cameron fail, the LibDems could still negotiate with the Labour Party, perhaps under a different leader as one senior Labour MP has already suggested. The chemistry between Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown is said to be poor, and Brown's conversion to a referendum on electoral reform was eleventh hour. He sees it as an unpalatable necessity for his survival, not an essential reform of an undemocratic system that delivers arbitrary results.

But the arithmetic is against a Lib-Lab deal. As The Guardian points out this morning, even with the ScotNats, the Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Green on board, there's only a bare majority of four, desperately vulnerable to casualties and by-elections, taking one back to the knife-edge days of the first Harold Wilson Government of 1964, which also started with a majority of four. Yes, it can be done, but remember that Harold went back to the country, encouraged by a by-election win at Hull, after only 16 months. This time, the other Parties would again be at the mercy of the Labour Prime Minister, whoever that may be, and s(he) would obviously pick a date for the next general election that suited them and not us. The scenario also presupposes that deals could be done with each of the minor parties, involving a protracted set of negotiations the markets can ill-afford, and possible concessions that would be seen as the tail wagging the dog.

At the end of Saturday, its too early even to guess at the likely outcome. All that can be said is that the decision to allow 19 days between pollibg day and the Queen’s Speech was sensible.The probability must be that Cameron isn't in a position to deliver anything other than his offer of an all-party committee to look into the matter. We had already been round that loop years ago with the Jenkins Commission, whose report is gathering dust in some forgotten cupboard in Whitehall. So a coalition with the Tories seems improbable, with disagreements on other key policies including Europe, nuclear power, and immigration. Maybe there is still a chance of agreement on a more limited 'arrangement’ whereby the LibDems agree not to vote against the motion to approve the Queen's Speech and the Budget, while keeping their options open on measures introduced by the Tory Government.

If the negotiations with Cameron fail, the LibDems could still negotiate with the Labour Party, perhaps under a different leader as one senior Labour MP has already suggested. The chemistry between Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown is said to be poor, and Brown's conversion to a referendum on electoral reform was eleventh hour. He sees it as an unpalatable necessity for his survival, not an essential reform of an undemocratic system that delivers arbitrary results.

The arithmetic is against a Lib-Lab deal. Even with the ScotNats, the Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Green on board, there's only a bare majority of four, desperately vulnerable to casualties and by-elections, taking one back to the knife-edge days of the first Harold Wilson Government of 1964, which also started with a majority of four. Yes, it can be done, but Harold went back to the country, encouraged by a by-election win at Hull, after only 16 months. This time, the other Parties would again be at the mercy of the Labour Prime Minister, whoever that may be, and s(he) would obviously pick a date for the next general election that suited them and not us. The scenario also presupposes that deals could be done with each of the minor parties, involving a protracted set of negotiations the markets can ill-afford, and possible concessions that would be seen as the tail wagging the dog.

At the end of Saturday, its too early even to guess at the likely outcome. All that can be said is that the decision to allow 19 days between pollibg day and the Queen’s Speech was sensible.