This is simply perverse, and no government elected by such an unfair system can have any legitimacy. If the election result is anything like this poll, then the only fair outcome is a temporary coalition to implement electoral reform, followed by a second election under a new, fair system.

Nick Clegg's rise could lock Murdoch and the media elite out of UK politics | David Yelland | Comment is free | The Guardian

I doubt if Rupert Murdoch watched the election debate last week. His focus is very firmly on the United States, especially his resurgent Wall Street Journal. But if he did, there would have been one man totally unknown to him. One man utterly beyond the tentacles of any of his family, his editors or his advisers. That man is Nick Clegg.

Make no mistake, if the Liberal Democrats actually won the election - or held the balance of power - it would be the first time in decades that Murdoch was locked out of British politics. In so many ways, a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote against Murdoch and the media elite.

I can say this with some authority because in my five years editing the Sun I did not once meet a Lib Dem leader, even though I met Tony Blair, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith on countless occasions. (Full disclosure: I have since met Nick Clegg.)

...

We now live in an era when very serious men and women stay out of politics because our national discourse is conducted by populists with no interest in politics whatsoever. What we have in the UK is a coming together of the political elite and the media in a way that makes people outside London or outside those elites feel disenfranchised and powerless. But all that would go to pot if Clegg were able to somehow pull off his miracle. For he is untainted by it.

Just imagine the scene in many of our national newspaper newsrooms on the morning a Lib-Lab vote has kept the Tories out of office. "Who knows Clegg?" they would say.

There would be a resounding silence.

"Who can put in a call to Gordon?" another would cry.

You would hear a pin drop on the editorial floor.

The fact is these papers, and others, decided months ago that Cameron was going to win. They are now invested in his victory in the most undemocratic fashion. They have gone after the prime minister in a deeply personal way and until last week they were certain he was in their sights.

I hold no brief for Nick Clegg. But now, thanks to him - an ingenue with no media links whatsoever - things look very different, because now the powerless have a voice as well as the powerful.

All of us who care about democracy must celebrate this over the coming weeks - even if Cameron wins in the end, at least some fault lines will have been exposed.

A crucial aspect of the British system of government is that the government of the day must enjoy the confidence of the House of Commons. General elections are held to return MPs to the House of Commons. Most commonly, one party has a majority of seats, and this party forms a government. However, on a number of occasions over the last century, a general election has produced a result in which no party has a majority of Members: a situation of no overall control. This is known as a "hung Parliament".

In February 2010 the Cabinet Office issued a draft chapter of their forthcoming Cabinet Manual. This draft chapter set out procedures for government regarding general elections and government formation, including procedures that would take place in a hung Parliament situation. The Cabinet Secretary gave evidence to the Justice Select Committee on the matter, along with academic experts and former Cabinet Secretaries on 24 February 2010.

Download a Nick Clegg poster, featuring the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the iconic Che Guevara design

(Apart from the badge Looks a lot like Gordon)

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

A Labour candidate is embroiled in a row with the Liberal Democrats after suggesting they would give convicted murderers and paedophiles the vote.

Roger Godsiff, who is standing in Birmingham Hall Green, issued leaflets showing nursery worker Vanessa George, who was jailed for abusing children.

He defended the move, saying his opponents were evading scrutiny, but Labour have now scrapped the leaflet.

The Lib Dems said they would not give those currently in prison the vote.

I saw Gordon Brown laugh today - not just smile but genuinely laugh in during a moment of confusion in a press conference. In fact Labour's whole machine, gathered at Bloomberg's HQ in London for an economy press briefing, seems to have lightened up. Two reasons:

First, as one senior Labour person put it to me: getting to the first weekend after the debates without Cameron establishing momentum and an unassailable lead was always going to be a result. They now feel they have done more than that.

1. Two or more parties form a majority coalition. This has only happened in the UK in emergency circumstances, such as world wars and the economic crisis of the 1930s.

I can see some attractions for a three party coalition, so the coming cuts can be made in the national interest without any of the parties getting all the blame.

Equally, if the outcome of the election wounds both Brown and Cameron, they might have a personal interest in clinging to party leadership, through a two party coalition. Both parties might find a grand coalition more palatable than a coalition with the Lib Dems involving the concession of PR.

The most likely two party coalition is Labour/Lib Dem, but it would depend on a government programme being agreed - which might be difficult.

2. Minority coalition, as suggested by Mr Heath (Conservative) to Mr Thorpe (Liberal) after the February 1974 election. Not a very attractive option, unless there was a very close to exactly balanced parliament (as in February 1974).

3. Minority government. This is what normally happens in the UK. In 1924 the first Labour government had the second largest number of seats. It was dependent on Liberal support to survive, but Mr MacDonald made the strategic decision not to reach any agreement with Mr Asquith. The Liberal Party was not anxious for another quick general election, so it sustained the minority government for a time. The Labour Party put a higher value on proving it was capable of producing a government on own, rather than being legislatively effective.

In 1974 Harold Wilson again relied on the unwillingness of the opposition parties to force a rapid second geral election, so the third Labour minority government continued for a while with no explicit agreement.

Sinn Fein has withdrawn its South Belfast candidate Alex Maskey from the general election.

The party president Gerry Adams announced the move on Tuesday.

However, it is thought unlikely that the SDLP will withdraw its candidate Fearghal McKinney in Fermanagh South Tyrone.

Last week, the SDLP leader, Margaret Ritchie, rejected the offer of a pact from Sinn Fein to cover the two constituencies.

Speaking about the move, Mr Adams said: "This is a bold leadership initiative by Sinn Fein. It is about protecting and defending two nationalist seats."

Mr Adams also said that he believed that "this initiative will be widely welcomed by nationalists.

Николас Вильям Питер Клегг родился в Бакингемшире в семье банкира. Семья была большой (четверо детей) и интернациональ&# 1085;ой. Мать Клегга - голландка, отец - наполовину русский. Прапрадедом Ника был известный российский юрист конца XIX - начала XX века, обер-прокурор Первого департамента Правового сената Игнатий Закревский. "Думаю, это объясняет мой интернационали&# 1089;тский взгляд на мир и то, почему я выучил несколько европейских языков (голландский, французский, немецкий и испанский)", - пишет сам политик в своей биографии.

Nicholas William Peter Clegg was born in Buckinghamshire in the family banker. The family was large (four children) and international. Mother Clegg - Dutch, father - half Russian. Great-greatgrandfathers Nick was well-known Russian lawyer late XIX - early XX century, Chief Procurator of the First Department of the Senate Legal Ignatius Zakrevsky. "I think this explains my internationalist view of the world and why I learned several European languages (Dutch, French, German and Spanish), "- he wrote politician in his biography.

The conditional voting intention finding from YouGov

"How would you vote if you thought the Liberal
Democrats had a significant chance of winning..?" (YouGov - April 19 2010)

Lib Dem 49%
Conservative 25%
Labour 19%

(reformatted for display)

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

Plaid Cymru's Helen Mary Jones says the party must be involved in the next two TV UK-wide leaders' debates.

Plaid complained to Ofcom that their exclusion from the first debate between Nick Clegg, Gordon Brown and David Cameron breached the broadcasting code.

It follows a YouGov opinion poll for ITV Wales, which showed a 5% drop in support for Plaid after the debate.

Ms Jones, Plaid's election director, told BBC Wales all they wanted was a "level playing field".

The YouGov poll of general election voting intention showed a 17% rise in support for the Liberal Democrats in the last month. Labour were ahead on 33%, the Liberal Democrats in second on 29%, the Conservatives are in third with 23% and Plaid in fourth, with just 9%.

Yesterday, I wrote in the Daily Mail that David Cameron's hope'n'change strategy of repositioning the Tories on the left, in the stupid belief that this was the way to win the trust of British voters, had left him totally unable to deal with the Nick Clegg phenomenon. His paralysis was plain for all to see in last Thursday's TV talent show. Trying to puncture the Clegg bubble by personalised election homilies from his garden won't help either. It's what Cameron is actually saying that matters. And he's still not saying what he needs to say, because he hasn't understood that his problem lies with his entire strategy. Saying as he said yesterday from the shrubberies of Notting Hill that `only the Tories could blow apart the old way of doing things' merely shows that the Cameroons really, really don't get it.

No-one believes you, chaps!

OK, this is an odd one - a candidate running in Sevenoaks on a platform quoting liberally from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion - the notorious Russian forgery claiming a worldwide Jewish conspiracy that served as a key text for 20th century European antisemitism.

Now breathe out and let's get back to the location: Sevenoaks. Cairo, maybe (the protocols linger on in the Arab world). But Sevenoaks? With its mix of turn-of-the-century plotting and a leafy setting in southern England, this is an election leaflet as it may have appeared in an Edwardian novel in the vein of HG Wells's War of the Worlds or Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent.

The candidate is Mark Ellis, a retired customs officer standing as an independent. The leaflet was sent by a reader understandably alarmed to find it on her doormat (and is also on the Straight Choice election leaflet website).  

Today, Boris Johnson showed just why he's loved by so many Tories..and why his political career is one long high-wire act.

Those of you who don't read the Daily Telegraph will have missed one of Boris's classic columns, this time on the Nick Clegg "madness" in the polls.

First, we find out that Boris has bet a thousand pounds that the Tories will win the next election.

Second, Boris says that "the current fantasy of a Liberal Democrat resuergence is the biggest load of media-driven nonsense since the funeral of Diana". (Yes, you read that right. Then again, Boris is a Charles fan)

Third, the public's verdict on the TV debates "was one of those times when there seems to be only one solution to the problems of British politics, and that's to dissolve the electorate and summon a new one".

Fourth, "everybody treats Vince Cable as a semi-holy Mahatma Gandhi of British politics"

Fifth, although the Lib Dems are everywhere today, "next week they will be gone with the wind" because the public will see that a vote for Clegg is a vote for Brown*.

DAILY MAIL COMMENT: It's time for voters to wake up and get real | Mail Online

There can be only one credible explanation for the utterly irrational outpouring of support for the Liberal Democrats after a mere 90 minutes of X Factor-style TV politics: the public, disgusted by the near moral bankruptcy of the last Parliament, is looking for revenge.

In significant numbers, voters' only interest in this most important of elections for a generation is giving the bloodiest of noses to a political class which, for many years, has been taking them for fools.

And, because of a brilliant propaganda coup, the LibDems have painted themselves as the clean, honest party with a fresh, untarnished leader in Mr Clegg.

To me it suggests that the increasingly real question is not whether the Lib Dems will support a Labour government after 6 May. It is whether Labour will support a Liberal Democrat government. Forget about the Lab-Lib deal, in other words, and start thinking about a Lib-Lab one. If I were Clegg I would sit tight and make Labour sweat. Brown is not really interested in co-operation. He is interested in clinging to power. And if there is one thing I am clear about amid the swirling currents of this election it is that the voters want Brown out, not Brown rescued.

In the name of its own principles, UKIP should now feel morally obliged to withdraw its candidates from the general election - or at least from contesting any seat in which a Liberal Democrat might oust a Conservative. If it does not - and if it thus succeeds in depriving the Conservatives of a working majority and inflating the LibDem result by default

There was a last-minute rush of people wishing to register to be able to vote in the general election, the Electoral Commission has said.

It said 50,000 registration forms were downloaded from its website on Tuesday, ahead of the 1700 BST deadline to get them to a person's local authority.

The Commission added more than 460,000 forms were downloaded from its website since 15 March.

Nearly half of these came after last week's prime ministerial TV debate.

Jenny Watson, chairwoman of the Electoral Commission, told the BBC's Today programme the debate did have "an impact".

"We did see a spike and we had a TV add running following the debate," she said.

As the fallout from the first Leaders' Debate continues, the Tory cheerleaders within the blogosphere have been reduced to a state of desperation: they don't want to appear nasty towards Corporal Clegg but their belief that Young Dave only had to turn up and look confident has been shot apart.

The prospect of a hung parliament, and potential coalition Government, is clearly causing distress, so much so that creative retelling of history to frighten voters back to the Tories has begun.

And yesterday's singularly desperate storyteller was Iain Dale, a compliant and reliable conduit for Tory propaganda. Dale has exhumed David Low's caricature of Lloyd George as coalition Prime Minister (after the "coupon election" of 1918) riding a two headed donkey.

He says that this Government was "possibly the worst ... of the 20th Century", which fails to explain why Lloyd George was, by 1922, at the height of his personal popularity. He summons the memory of Michael Foot in telling what did for LG.

The Christian Peoples Alliance is a party rooted in the historic Christian faith that seeks to demonstrate the love of God through political service. Our faith and principles are drawn from the Bible, especially the life and teaching of Jesus Christ, as well as from Christian political insights through the centuries.

David Cameron is in a corner following the Lib Dem surge. His Big Society message isn't connecting, he doesn't know what kind of campaign he wants to run or what kind of leader he wants to be.

In truth, that has always been the problem with his `modernisation' of the Tory party - but it's becoming more apparent in the heat of electoral battle.

The latest reaction is a poster declaring that people will have their benefits cut if they refuse to work. Wow. Great idea.

The slight snag for the Tories is that this is such a revolutionary idea, it has been law in its current form for about 15 years - and was the law for most of the post-First World War War period.

That was until the Tories reduced conditions on benefits in the 1980s recession, because they wouldn't increase the spending needed to run the operation. 

Our April Political Monitor shows that, among those who are absolutely certain to vote, 32% say they would vote Conservative, 32% Liberal Democrat and 28% Labour. The Liberal Democrat share has increased by 11 points since last month, representing the highest score that Ipsos MORI has recorded for this party since it formed in 1988.

The Conservatives are down 3 points since March, and Labour are down two points, reducing the Conservative lead over Labour to two points. These results, if applied with a uniform national swing, would result in a hung parliament, and the Liberal Democrats would gain 54 parliamentary seats. However, whether uniform national swing will play out in the election remains to be seen.

The Liberal Democrat leader was paid regular monthly sums by three senior businessmen during 2006.

The same account was used to pay his mortgage, shopping and other personal expenditure, documents seen by this newspaper show.

It's worth noting that:

All money was declared to Parliament and has an audit trail (unlike George Osborne, say...)

Here's a screengrab of Nick Griffin and the floating Marmite in the party political broadcast.  The Marmite is not explained.

If you've just arrived on the blog, we're posting this because Marmite is taking legal action against the BNP over the jar's inclusion, in one of the more brilliant collisions of brands we can think of.

David Cameron is the man with everything to lose, says former GMTV boss Peter McHugh, as the Conservative leader warms up for tonight's second live TV debate with Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg.

 "We haven't ever taken the Lib Dems seriously as a party and Clegg as a person, and now it's not funny." David Cameron of the Tory Party? No, David Williams of Ladbrokes.

A week is a long time in politics but a short time at the bookies. And they are off again tonight.

How the world has changed in just seven days. Manchester United are back in the race for the Premiership and David Cameron could be out of it.

Alastair Campbell mentions in passing on his blog that Michael Portillo (right, with meerkat) said at an event this morning that the Conservatives should give the Liberal Democrats a system of proportional representation if that is the price of their support in a hung parliament:

Several years ago, Rebekah Wade (now Rebekah Brooks), then the editor of Sun, Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid, started trying to convince Murdoch that his newspapers should support David Cameron, the Conservative party candidate for prime minister.

This took some doing because Murdoch had become a good friend and pretty loyal supporter of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. What's more, Murdoch's wife, Wendi, is a great buddy of Brown's wife, Sarah. But Wade/Brooks is persistent and, in Murdoch's words, "knows how to work my family." She convinced Murdoch's son, James, that Cameron was the certain future. James then went to work on his father, and a reluctant Murdoch--telling everyone who would listen that Cameron was too slick by half--sourly went along.

You could be forgiven for thinking that there was an unofficial contest taking place on the right at the moment to see who can give David Cameron the single most dud piece of advice. Nuke China! Replace police chiefs with politicians! Make Israel the centrepiece of your foreign policy attack on Nick Clegg in the next debate! Use George Osborne more!

Actually, I made one of those up.

Update 1939: I now learn that political reporters from the Tory-backing papers were called in one by one to discuss how Team Cameron would deal with "Cleggmania" and to be offered Tory HQ's favourite titbits about the Lib Dems - much of which appears in today's papers.

The key personal allegation about payments from donors into Nick Clegg's personal
bank account came, however, from the Telegraph's expenses files. Incidentally, the party has now published details of Nick Clegg's bank statements and party accounts showing that Mr Clegg received payments totalling £19,690 from three businessmen (Neil Sherlock, Michael Young, Ian Wright) and then paid staff costs of £20,437.30 out of the same account. According to these figures, Mr Clegg actually paid £747.30 out of his own money towards staff costs.

Trenchant commentary on Rupert Murdoch's no-holds-barred blitz to get the Conservatives into office in the upcoming UK election. Posted by @_Jameslloyd to TwitPic.

The Sun newspaper failed to publish a YouGov poll showing that voters fear a Liberal Democrat government less than a Conservative or Labour one.

The Liberal Democrats accused the newspaper, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, of suppressing the finding. The paper, which endorsed Labour in the past three elections, declared its support for David Cameron during the Labour Party's annual conference last October. Like other Tory-supporting papers, it has turned its fire on Nick Clegg over his policies, pro-European statements and expenses claims since he won last week's first televised leaders' debate.

The British National Party -- Blog -- No one's mate Marmite

Ever since 1902 Marmite has had a reputation as a wholesome stuff you spread on your toast. In fact, it is made from industrial waste in a gigantic chemical factory in the Midlands by a global multinational corporation. A corporation which has been involved in dumping toxic waste in India, exploiting underpaid workers in Pakistan and hacking down tropical rain forests in Africa and Indonesia and has now decided to pick a fight with the BNP in the service of its internationalist agenda.

When did this switch from an election scripted by Charles Saatchi to one painted by Salvador Dali? If I had told you a month ago that Gordon Brown would be despatching naval warships to Spain, David Cameron would be jostling with a man dressed as a chicken and down to 30 per cent, and Nick Clegg would be identified alternately as "the most popular leader since Churchill" and a Nazi, you would have called for Nurse Ratched.

But something stranger still is happening in The Election That Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Every day in this country, two big forces artificially drag the British government way to the right of the British people, making it enact policies that benefit a small, rich elite at the expense of the rest. We are not supposed to notice this, never mind try to change it. Yet suddenly, in this election, those forces have been exposed.

According to a first edition of The Times (pictured above, left) David Cameron and Nick Clegg were "neck and neck" in the polls after "an impassioned contest which turned personal". Later a second edition of the paper (above, right) declared "Cameron nicks it".

You do not have to support the Liberal Democrats or Nick Clegg or be carried along on the current poll wave to wonder, as a journalist, what was going on Wednesday in the newsrooms and editorial offices of the Telegraph, Mail, Express and Sun.

You don't have to be a conspiracists, either, to ask some tough questions about what their attacks on Nick Clegg are really about. As BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson put it, at its very least (my words):

"The Establishment is in something of a panic at the idea that he might deny the big two parties of their moment of victory and want to stop him in his tracks?"

And as someone much cleverer and more famous than me once put it: the thing about Establishment conspiracies is that you don't have to organise them - everyone knows what they have to do.

Vote Nick Clegg... get Nick Griffin

Be careful what you wish for. The Lib Dems are squealing because Nick Clegg is being subjected to the same kind of kicking as the leaders of the grown-up parties.

That's entertainment. When Clegg cynically decided to present himself dishonestly as a political 'outsider', he was asking for trouble. So long as the Lib Dems were wallowing in the shallows, no one really cared. But now their leader is surfing the crest of a wave, there's no hiding place.

What Clegg calls 'smears' the rest of the world calls 'telling the truth'. If he hadn't done it, we couldn't write about it.

Craig Murray - Sky Leaders' Debate: Murdoch Made. I didn't watch it last night (again) but Craig did, and this makes for some fascinating analysis. This is the bit that really caught my eye:

I have had Sky News on for half an hour. First they had a paper review with one Labour journalist and one Tory (Sun) journalist. No Liberal. Then they had Tory frontbencher William Hague and Labour frontbencher Douglas Alexander on to discuss the debate. No Liberal. Apparently dead to irony, the Sky newscaster asked them "In the interests of politicial balance, would you two like to comment on Nick Clegg's perfomance". Absolutely beyond parody.

Twitter / Charlie Brooker: M&C Saatchi just asked if ...

M&C Saatchi just asked if I'd appear in a 'comedy' Tory election broadcast this wknd. Haha, Jesus & NO. Must be asking literally anyone.

BBC - BBC Comedy Blog: A new surprise for the Leaders' Wives

When we shot our satirical mockumentary Leader's Wives (above) on Monday, we were listing possible disasters that could befall the shoot - in the time between shooting and editing, Samantha Cameron could have fallen off her horse; Sarah Brown could have got RSI from tweeting; and Miriam Gonzalez Durantez could have changed her mind and decided to "fanny about on the campaign trail".

Also our actress Lucy Montgomery (SamCam) could have gone into labour, and she actually did 48 hours later (Congratulations Lucy!).

But amongst all of the eventualities we planned for, we never expected a call from the Tories' advertising agency asking our company Clever Pie to co-produce a Party Political Broadcast for them.

Reporters do of course write stories about political life in the broader sense and about the substance of issues ... but when there is a chance to use these issues as props or raw material for a story about political tactics, most reporters leap at it. It is more fun ... in fact they ask questions that only their fellow political professionals care about. And they often do so with a discourtesy and rancour that represent the public's views much less than they reflect the modern journalist's belief that being independent boils down to acting hostile."

The US journalist James Fallows wrote this in The Atlantic in 1996: in the 2010 UK general election, it's truer than it was.

The Economist wrote today that the mainstream media - newspapers, radio and television - dominate news and comment on the election, almost to the exclusion of significant use of the internet. Let's hope for better next time, when the wealth of the internet can be brought to bear on electoral choice because the record of the mainstream media so far is dismal.

I was emailed by White Rabbit who suggested a couple of election graphics for blogs and blog sidebars.