Even A Blind Man Can See That It's Time For The Left To Grow Up

It's been left to David Blunkett to confront the "don't do it, Nick" lobby with the truths they're assiduously trying to avoid. The maths simply does not work and, even if it did, the resulting 'rainbow coalition' would lack legitimacy.

Whenever a Labour supporter or a left-leaning Liberal Democrat points out that 64% of the electorate voted against David Cameron's Conservatives, they appear oblivious to the fact that 71% of voters opted not to vote for Gordon Brown's government.

Since the introduction of universal suffrage, only once has the winning party at a British election secured more than half the votes of the electorate... so the 'more people were against them' argument could have been used to question the legitimacy of every Government apart from Stanley Baldwin's 1931 administration.

David Blunkett is sensible enough to be honest about how he would have felt if Jeremy Thorpe's Liberals had propped up Edward Heath's government in 1974. He felt then and feels now that the most clearly-stated intent of the electorate at the first of the two elections that year was to get rid of the Government. And it's worth bearing in mind that last week's election was downright decisive compared with the February 1974 poll. At that election, the Conservatives won 226,564 more votes than the Labour Party but it was the latter who won the most seats... just 4 more than the Tories.

Had Jeremy Thorpe decided to form a coalition with the Conservatives he would have been supporting the party that won the most votes in a House of Commons so evenly balanced that the election could legitimately have been called a draw. By contrast, last week the Conservatives gained 2,079,429 more votes than the Labour Party and this helped to secure 48 more seats than Labour.

In 1974, Thorpe and the Liberals recognised that the electorate had willed a change of government and that this couldn't be achieved by allowing a damaged government to limp on. The same is true now.

Instead of pretending that the Conservatives' failure to win an overall majority provides sufficient grounds to keep David Cameron out of Downing Street, the left should be grateful that the combination of factors which led to a Hung Parliament will enable the Liberal Democrats to temper the worst instincts of the Tories while allowing the Labour Party to regroup and win the next election under a new leader.

It's worth noting that there's one part of the United Kingdom that is genuinely entitled to question the legitimacy of the Conservative government... and that is Scotland. The Tories have only one MP north of the border and Cameron's party only managed to win 17% of the vote. This dismal showing puts them in fourth place in Scotland behind Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats. Alex Salmond may be feeling a little bruised after winning precisely none of the additional 14 seats he targeted but he should recognise that a Tory in Downing Street is one of the key ingredients required to win an independence referendum in Scotland.

These are turbulent times and there is a great need for stability. While none of the available options is capable of providing a truly robust government, a coalition dependent on four or more political parties and the absolute loyalty of every MP elected under their banners will be almost absurdly flimsy. A Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition will have a working majority and will, therefore, be able to govern. It's the only sensible option.