Ha ha ha – best response I've heard so far – just some punter on 5 LIve:

Strip out Scotland, Wales and about 8 million people on the public payroll and Cameron has a clear majority!

Strip out everyone outside my household and the Lib Dems won unanimously.

And Scotland should be given independence?

Only if they let me move there first.

chakaping, you can be first after me.

If anyone should go it's Cameron. The Tories should have won this with a landslide, economy up the spout, charmless oppostion leader, oppostion at the end of their fourth term, massive budget deficit. it was his to lose, and with that result he's effectively lost.

Feel sorry for the lib dems, combination of poor electoral system and spineless voters. My guess is a surprising number of the 40% of undecided voters only made up their minds when faced with the ballet paper and then went itno auto pilot.

best we can hope for is that there is some form of Lib/Lab coalition which actually ends up with reform. I don't given the likely timescales before it all collapses that's very likely though. Trouble is if we have another election less than 12 months (which I think is likely) it'll be similar result if Cameron and Brown are still around.

Think if Cons get a working coalition it'll last for a while. They'll have quite a while to blame the previous government for getting us into this mess. After all, Labour have been trotting that soundbite out for 13 years now.

My worry with PR is you'll end up with BNP getting seats unless there is a snazzy way of mucking the votes around to avoid that. But then is that fair? Not that I'm sticking up for those toerags but if people are complaining that Libs should have 24% of the seats can they then turn round and say its not right that BNP (or whoever) don't get their 'rigthful' percentage too?

Would you end up with the, say, Green party deciding things potentially with their small number of votes.

Maybe we should stop the Party Whip idea, so that MPs can vote for their constituencies (or their heart) rather than be bullied into the party line?

Still there so far, after some of the smartest negotiating you're likely to see.

Happy days.

after some of the smartest negotiating you're likely to see.

The 4 most important jobs in British politics :

1. Prime Minister = Tory

2. Chancellor of the Exchequer = Tory

3. Foreign Secretary = Tory

4. Home Secretary = Tory

Deputy Prime Minister, a job of so little importance that even John Prescott was trusted to do = Liberal Democrat

If you consider that be "the smartest negotiating you're likely to see", then I can fully understand why you might be impressed by the 0.9% increase in LibDem vote since 2005.

I however, am completely unimpressed by Clegg's negotiating skills.

I'm also particularly unimpressed by the fact that despite, New Labour being completely discredited, despite the Tories failing to inspire the electorate with credible alternatives, despite receiving unprecedented equal footing on TV debates, despite a captive audience desperate to be offered an alternative, despite all that, the LibDems under Clegg's leadership, only managed to increase their vote by 0.9% compared to the previous general election result.

The SDP-Liberal Alliance were getting more support 25 years ago than they are today under Nick Clegg.

As I've said previously, I consider Nick Clegg becoming leader of the LibDens to be the greatest disaster in British politics in recent years. And the sooner Clegg is replaced and the Libdems re-establish themselves as a social democratic party committed to a mixed economy and universal welfare state, then the quicker politics in Britain can move forward to the benefit of ordinary people. And I say that not only as someone who has previously voted LibDem, but also as someone who has put in the hard work of canvassing door to door for them.