Training | 2010.04.19
My vote is for mayhem | Marina Hyde
We should embrace the mystery and hilarity of a hung parliament: it may be the trigger for vital constitutional reform
The old American joke about cricket is to express bafflement that any game could take five days to play and still end in a draw. For some, the possibility that the British public could endure almost five weeks of this general election and it still end in a draw is less amusing. But given we can only play it as it lays, perhaps it\'s time to heed the advice of one of the rabbis in the Coen brothers\' movie A Serious Man, and embrace the mystery.
After all, grimly hilarious scenarios might come to pass. Gordon Brown could actually lose the vote but remain in power, a psephological quirk that would presumably ensure the first act of his premiership was not a self-congratulatory speech but the introduction of martial law to quell the civic unrest.
Such eccentricities of our electoral system might have been weathered by the populace in 1951 and 1974, but with trust in politics so abysmally low, they could lose some of their daffy charm. Yet, while it might be the most eloquent argument for electoral reform since the rotten borough of Old Sarum sent two MPs to Westminster to represent 11 voters (all of whom were landowners resident somewhere else entirely), Gordon not being elected PM for the second time is merely one of a number of possible surreal outcomes to this election.
To say we lack a manual for such territories would be wrong, as the cabinet secretary, Gus O\'Donnell, has had to rush one out . But the most apt metaphor for the present moment is that brilliant scene in The Wrong Trousers, when Wallace and Gromit are aboard a runaway model train, and Gromit has frantically to keep laying spare track just in time for the train to which he is clinging to clatter over it.
Never mind the parties\' humdrum campaigns – the whispers of behind-the-scenes establishment panic are more captivating entirely. Nobody has a clue. A few weeks ago a friend heard an item on Radio 4 that suggested there was so little precedent in terms of a hung parliament that the best guide comes in the form of a 1950 letter to the Times from a former Lord Chancellor.
Yet that was a few weeks ago, and as indicated, some more track has been frantically thrown down on the apparent orders of the sovereign. Whether the Queen heard the same radio item one cannot say, but she was reportedly extremely concerned at the lack of definition of her role in the event of a hung parliament. And why wouldn\'t she be, given that it would take about 37 minutes after the announcement of the non-result before Her Maj was besieged by infantile tabloid headlines reminiscent of those in the wake of Diana\'s death. You recall the sort of thing – "Your people are hurtin\' – GO TO THEM" or the inevitable "Just tell us what to do ma\'am", as the constitutional and congenital halfwits of Fleet Street attempt to emotionally blackmail the sovereign into reverting to pre-Regency status.
So ma\'am had a word with the Cabinet Office, who have naturally been in their own tizz. It was revealed that no senior civil servants had an iota of experience of hung parliaments, which is just another darkly amusing reminder of how many of our great and powerful wizards are just men behind a curtain. In Michael Cockerell\'s recent BBC series The Great Offices of State , it emerged that as the financial crisis was poised to engulf the world, there were only three people left in the Treasury who had ever been through a recession.
In the circs, then, it is hardly surprising that no one knows whether a hung parliament would be good or bad for the country. Having yearned for a bit of weak government in this space recently, I shan\'t reprise the argument, but for what it\'s worth – and, as I say, who on earth can tell? – the cabinet secretary says he doubts the financial markets would be destabilised. Yet yesterday\'s Telegraph splash read: "Tory win best for economy say top bankers". (I forget precisely who are our "top bankers" these days, but perhaps they\'ll forgive us if we respond to their economic advice by shrieking with laughter before inviting them to run along now.)
Whichever your view, though, it has become clear that more track is urgently required, and this week O\'Donnell has flown to New Zealand to powwow with other cabinet secretaries about constitutional affairs. As Sue Cameron in the FT pointed out in an intriguing article, apart from Israel and New Zealand, Britain is the only country in the world without a written constitution. And having rushed out a manual on what to do in the event of a hung parliament, O\'Donnell is to follow this with a 10-chapter cabinet manual which effectively further codifies the constitution.
So who knows? Backed by the outpouring of public fury that could greet some surreal election outcome, that forthcoming document might just serve as the very beginnings of Britain\'s vitally needed written constitution. It\'s worth considering that, just as in cricket, a draw can be a pretty good result in the long term.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]mayhem-mystery-hung-parliament
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