Introduction

Abstract

For the first time in a general election since the hung parliament of 1974 no single party emerged as the winner of the 2010 campaign. The Conservatives came first with 36.1 per cent of the vote (306 seats, up ninety-seven), Labour next on 29 per cent (258 seats, down ninety-one), the Liberal Democrats third with 23 per cent (fifty-seven seats, down five) and the rest on 11.9 per cent (twenty-nine seats, down two). In 2005 a 3 per cent margin of victory had been sufficient to enable Labour to form a government with a comfortable working majority. The electoral arithmetic this time meant that, although the Tories’ lead was larger, they won fewer than half the seats necessary to govern alone. And, although a hung parliament had been widely predicted, the reality of it still appeared to come as a surprise to some commentators. What followed was a protracted period of negotiations over several days, principally involving the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, which ended in these parties agreeing to join together in a formal Coalition, the first of its kind since 1945. If this was a departure from past practice, then so was the campaign itself, given the arrival of the first ever Prime Ministerial Debates.