LEADER of the Scottish National Party Nicola Sturgeon makes candy floss at an amusement park in Motherwell, Scotland, during her campaign trail. UK goes to the polls on May 7 to elect a new parliament.—AFP

With just days to go before the closest UK general elections in decades, I find myself in a quandary. As a UK resident, my vote has been registered for the first time, and I have less than a week to decide whom to vote for. Normally, I would vote Labour, even though Ed Miliband has never impressed me very much. In fact, he was comprehensively outperformed in the recent BBC Question Time programme by David Cameron.

The problem is that in the Wiltshire constituency of Devizes where I live part of the year, Claire Perry, the Conservative candidate and MP in the last parliament, is so far ahead in the polls that no one has the remotest chance of catching up. She is polling at 55 per cent, while the Liberal Democrat candidate is trailing with 27pc, and Labour is at a distant 10pc. And to be fair, Perry has done an excellent job in representing her constituency: accessible and helpful, she has earned her poll numbers.

But I am not alone in my dilemma: around 14pc of British voters are undecided. Although a spate of recent polls give the Tories a slight edge, others put Labour ahead. Given these huge uncertainties, there are lots of voters to win over, and the stakes could not be higher.

Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the resurgent Scottish National Party, has been called “the most dangerous woman in Britain”. The reason is that from its current six MPs, the SNP is now set to win at least 50 out of Scotland’s 59 seats, while some pollsters are forecasting a clean sweep. These gains are entirely at Labour’s expense; in fact, the party is facing a wipeout in the region where it was born around a century ago.

As the opinion polls now stand, the Tories are expected to win around 280 seats, with Labour at 268. The Conservative Party will thus need at least 46 more seats to get to the magic number of 326 to form the next government. The problem it faces is that the Lib Dems, its recent coalition partner, is expected to win at best 26 seats, down from the 56 it had in the last parliament. This adds up to 306, or 20 short of a majority.

Nigel Farrage’s Ukip, another possible coalition partner, could win a maximum of three seats, despite its 15pc standing in the national polls. The reason for this wide disparity between its popularity and the number of seats it can win is that its support is scattered, and while Ukip might tip the balance to either of the two major parties in marginal constituencies, it can’t translate its votes into seats. Such are the vagaries of the first-past-the-poll system.

The SNP has made it clear that it will never support a Conservative government. The other side of the equation has Labour, currently 50 plus seats short, entering into some kind of arrangement with the SNP. Sturgeon has repeatedly offered to support Labour on a vote-by-vote basis, but thus far, her overtures have been spurned by Miliband .

Although Labour and the SNP are closer ideologically than the other big players, Miliband wants to shake off Tory accusations that he would be manipulated by the SNP in any deal. The charge that he would go along with Sturgeon’s stated ambition to take Scotland out of the United Kingdom is very damaging. On other issues, too, there are wide gaps: the SNP wants the Trident nuclear deterrent to be moved out of its base in Scotland, and also wants to halt the austerity cuts. All these extreme positions give Cameron a stick to beat Miliband with, so the Labour leader is being forced to deny the possibility of any post-election deal with the SNP.

Similarly, Labour is accusing the Tories of taking Ukip on as a coalition partner in a post-election scenario in a desperate bid to retain power. This would give Farrage possible leverage in his ambition to pull the UK out of the European Union. And his anti-immigration agenda could find greater traction in a coalition where he holds the whip hand, even with a meagre three seats.

Even if Cameron emerges with the biggest bloc of seats, he is unlikely to get to 326 with all the various combinations available to him. Miliband has no option but to accept SNP support if he wants to be the next prime minister. The harsh arithmetic of the numbers game makes it more likely that Miliband will be the next prime minister, but it will be as head of a fragile arrangement arrived at after much horse-trading. Currently, both leaders are insisting that they are fighting for outright victory, and will not admit the possibility of coming to power through coalitions.

However, given all the opinion polls over the last couple of years, such declarations ring hollow. As we saw in 2010, the Lib Dems, despite their ideological differences with the Conservatives, went into coalition, suffering a huge decline in popularity as disillusioned supporters have flocked to Labour. Perhaps what their stint as junior partners will be remembered for is the enactment of a law that enforces a fixed five-year tenure. Thus, a government will not necessarily fall if it loses the vote on a major bill.

Whatever the outcome of next week’s election, the big winner is going to be Sturgeon. With 50 plus seats in parliament, she will be a formidable presence with the power to gain major concessions for Scotland. Currently, she is the most popular politician in the country, and her diminutive size belies her enormous appeal as she visits various Scottish constituencies. I just wish I could vote for her…

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2015

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