So, what a pickle, eh?
The first hung parliament since 1974, and we're still no closer tonight to knowing who the Government will be. Or are we?
Anyone interested in knowing how things panned out from hour to hour last time - complete with hilarious detail of Jeremy Thorpe tramping across farm-fields and the sitcom-like escapades of the Carringtons - should go and take a look at the formerly secret memo here which sets it all out in detail. Thanks to the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, it's now all public. And if you want a useful summary of everything that happened back then, you'll find it here.
As for today - many people are getting very hot under the collar about the current piece of Realpolitik in which the Lib Dems find themselves engaged. What, exactly, should they do instead? Refuse to talk to anyone? How grown-up would that be? Is it the principle of 'consorting' that the objectors don't like, or the fact that their own party isn't being represented?...
Like it or not, a Conservative minority government is not being offered at the moment. The current position is that, as the sitting PM, Gordon Brown has every constitutional right to sit tight unless and until the other parties show that they could produce a stable Government.
At least, I believe he does. Where is that British Constitution exactly?...
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