Right, so, there’s no obvious result. Tories have most seats and most votes, but not really enough to form the sort of “strong, decisive” Government that Cameron says Britain needs.

The Lib Dems and Labour, together, would be just as precariously placed – however Brown has first dibs by virtue of the fact he’s still Prime Minister. Old Barnacle Brown remains Prime Minister until he resigns and tells the Queen who should take over. That’s not a conversation Brown’s going to want to make.

So, Tory minority Government is going to be weak and demand a General Election before the end of the year. A Lib/Lab Pact would be the same. The only means of getting a strong Government out of the current arrangement is a Lib/Con pact or coalition, but somehow I suspect the original Tory plan of ignoring the Lib Dems and carrying on without them, no matter what, will now hold true.

My feeling is that any partnership with Labour will mean the demise of the Liberal Democrats at the next election. The backlash for propping up Brown will be unstoppable. The narrative around the Lib Dems could be that they peaked in 2005, and they’re now on the decline (presumably as attitudes to the EU harden, attitudes to Immigration swerve Right and the electorate becomes increasingly reactionary). They need to take radical action now to stop this.

Many Lib Dem activists are saying that, if they got Proportional Representation (by doing a deal with Labour), the subsequent demise of the Lib Dems would be a sacrifice they’d be willing to make. I mean, literally that: I asked specifically if they’d be happy with the Lib Dems losing 20-30 seats as a consequence and the answer was “absolutely”.

I shudder to think. What Clegg does next is going to be absolutely crucial, and if he’s got any brains at all, if he wants the Lib Dems to survive, he WON’T do a deal with Labour and he’ll concentrate on giving Lib Dem help in sorting out the deficit and not much else. He needs to look like he’s putting the country ahead of the party, although ironically seeking PR as a condition of coalition (in effect ruling out the Tories) would, in fact, really be putting the country ahead of the party… well if you assume that PR is good for the country that is. If you don’t, the Lib Dems could be about to sacrifice themselves for absolutely nothing.

My feeling is that Nick Clegg is smarter than that, but he needs the consent of his MPs before he can do any deal. They’re going to want PR, and he may have little power to resist after such disastrous results.

It seems Nick Clegg has, at last, been a bit more specific about what he means when he says, in the event of a hung parliament, the party with the “Biggest Mandate” has the first dibs on trying to form a Government.

You’d think such questions would be straightforward, but no: Did he mean seats or votes? ‘Votes’ would suggest the Conservatives, ‘Seats’ would suggest Labour.

So finally we have the answer, and what a Lib Dem-esque answer it is, too: “Biggest mandate” means highest votes AND seats.

What this means is that if Labour comes third in the popular vote, but wins the most seats, that won’t count. This is good news, I think, and could rule out a Liberal Labour coalition unless Labour are somehow able to show even the smallest hint of returning to the ferocious and relentless election winning machine of old.

It doesn’t seem likely. There’s really not that long to go now (you’ll be relieved to hear), and Labour seems to have literally abandoned all hope. Yesterday’s frankly cringeworthy Elvis stunt (their Elvis impersonator sang, “A little less conversation, A little more action please” without any hint of irony) may prove to be surprisingly apt:

Labour, it seems, is going to die sat on a toilet with its pants round its ankles, blowing a blood vessel trying to poo out a stubborn, rock like turd that’s been lodged up their colon for the last few years: Gordon Brown.

What would the Lib Dems do in the event of a hung parliament? The Tories are slipping down the polls (I’m blaming their constant “When we’re in government” tone,  talking about Lisbon and the recent wave of pity for Gordon). It’s possible that no clear winner will emerge from the general election, forcing the parties to do deals with each other in order to form a government.

I thought this matter was settled. I thought Nick had ruled out a coalition with Labour. Apparently not!

The ground has shifted again and Nick Clegg has elaborated on the party’s position:

… which all sounds fair enough, but he’s left himself some wriggle room here – does mandate mean popular vote or the number of seats? It’s a crucial question considering how few votes Labour needs to win a seat in comparison with the Conservatives (and the effect is exaggerated still further for the Liberal Democrats).

The idea that the public are the kingmakers is a noble one, but there’s a problem – the single biggest vote will be for the ‘couldn’t care less who wins’ party, that will make up anything between 40-60% of the eligible voters, making them the nearest thing to a ‘majority opinion.’

The real mandate is ‘do what you want, we don’t care, you’re all the same, my vote doesn’t matter anyway.’

Even if, say, the Tory and Lib Dem vote adds up to more than 50% of the votes of all eligible voters and they go into coalition, there’s still a problem: Neither party has a mandate from the majority for their policies, so how do you decide which policies to go with?

Or have we all got so used to the idea that the government doesn’t need a mandate from the majority (just a majority) that we don’t care anymore?