ConDem Nation? Why it might not be all bad

I've been avoiding blogging about the election for some time now, mostly because I kept changing my bloody mind about who to vote for, why, and what the outcome meant. Also, this will probably be rambling and without much of a coherent point, but then so are most of my posts so nothing new there.

I have spent far too much of the last few days watching the news and reading various opinions and have slowly come to a position of "we'll see".

When this election campaign kicked off, I gloomily predicted a slim Tory majority. Then the first televised debate happened, the polls saw the Liberal Democrats' popularity soar and I found myself getting swept away with Cleggmania. For once it looked like the LibDems might not be viewed as "a wasted vote" and the electorate was waking up to the idea that it had other options than choosing between the big two. But I still had my reservations. See, I'm a cynic at heart, and got stung once before when I fell for a young, good looking and charismatic politician talking about change. At the time I was too young to vote, but it didn't take long New Labour to lose my faith so much so that I've only ever voted for them once, in local elections, and then only because there were two seats and only one Green candidate. Possibly Clegg will turn out to be a little more honest and principled than Blair, but as they're both leaders who're more right-wing than the majority of their parties' supporters and who've led their party into government against expectation, I don't think the comparison is entirely ungrounded. My fundamental distrust of politicians led me to decide to vote based on policies and tried not to be swayed by personality. Despite being a borderline commie at heart, and nearly falling head over heels in love with the Green Party's manifesto equality policies, I ended up voting for the LibDems, mostly on the basis of their science policy. I may have laughably naive ideas about how to run an economy, but I feel much more confident in stating that rational, evidence based policy is essential. Ultimately, I live in a safe Labour seat, so I knew my vote would make no difference, and sure enough, it didn't.

Having thrown my lot in with Clegg's cohort, I did feel somewhat deflated on hearing the exit poll and indeed the final results the next day. The bitter disappointment that, on the day, the country that seemed to be favouring "another way" appeared to have bottled it, soon gave way to the fear that we'd have another election within a year which would lead to a more decisive Conservative victory. But the coalition talks started and like many other LibDem supporters, I was hoping Clegg would hold out for proportional representation while still being sure we wouldn't get it. The prospect of a Lab/Lib/others government, while tantalizing at first, was obviously unstable and worryingly unlikely to be popular with the general public. And while my initial reaction to the idea of them getting into bed with the Tories was "well, I'm never voting for Lib Dem again", it did begin to look like the only viable option. Bluntly put, if Clegg had been seen to block the formation of a stable government it would have killed any chance of getting electoral reform in the near future. In order for arguments for PR to have any weight, you have to show that hung parliaments are not a huge problem. And while the Tories' sop of a referendum on AV (which they will campaign against, and probably win) is far short of any real change in the voting system, it is, frankly, better than nothing and at least a step in the right direction.

Still, I felt a bit maudlin last night when Brown resigned and Cameron headed to Buckingham Palace to become PM. But the confirmation that it was to be a "full coalition" tempered that slightly and even gave hope that some good Lib Dem policies might actually have a chance, while stopping some of the worst Tory ones. Sadly, reading the details of the deal it's all too easy to feel betrayed on a few key points: Trident, immigration and the married couple tax allowance spring to mind. But there's the good too, in particular the willingness to at least look at reforming the House of Lords. And overall, the move to fixed-term parliaments and Cameron actually sounding like he means it (but yeah, politician) when he talks of taking Britain "in a historic new direction" gives me some hope that there is sincerity on both sides to make this coalition work. And that's what we need if we are to convince people that PR is a viable alternative to our current system. So as unpalatable as a Conservative government may be, and as dirty as some may feel for working alongside them, I still hold out some hope that, if nothing else, it's better than if only the Tories were running the show.

I can understand and sympathise with activists, voters and members abandoning the party in disgust. I dare say this will lose them a lot of votes and I'm a bit worried that it may spell doom for the Lib Dems and they'll go back to being an also ran, or possibly just fall apart completely from internal disagreement. I'm not sure how worried I should be about this, as I've already admitted they're probably too centrist for me and I'm unlikely to have anything other than a Labour MP for the foreseeable future. There's a distinct possibility I'll go back to being disillusioned and apathetic about politics, but for now I'm willing to admit that "it could be worse" and at least we've seen the back of bloody ID cards. I can't imagine ever welcoming a Tory government, but I'm happy to wait for them to actually screw up before jumping down their throats.