(2.Mai) On the current polling Labour and the Conservatives will be the biggest parties, and each could form a coalition with one or more of the smaller parties, but on the current numbers they would still struggle to command a workable majority; or they could try to govern as a minority government, relying on support from the smaller parties on a vote-by-vote basis.
The first thing any government has to do is get the House of Commons to approve the Queen’s Speech, the annual ‘To-Do’ list of policies which the government proposes to introduce – which is written by the government, read out by the Queen and then debated before being voted through.
But with the SNP pledging to vote down anything the Conservatives propose, David Cameron knows that a minority government led by him would struggle to get the Queen’s Speech