If you were Gordon Brown, and assuming that I am wrong about SNP gains and the numbers were right, would you rather stay in power and do a deal with the SNP on their terms or resign and make way for a Conservative government when the party rank and file know you could have avoided it?

Isn’t it, historically, just too big a hill to climb in one go for the Conservatives to get a working majority?

If I remember correctly, there is quite a narrow window in FPTP which results in no overall majority. The LibDems will get around 18-20% because they always do. It’s made up of core support plus tactital voting where they are expected to win or come second.

I dont think think there will be much change in Scotland even though the SNP government is doing astonishingly well. The Conservatives will do well if they hang on to the seat they have. The SNP won’t take many seats from Labour. Partly this is because of very large majorities in the west. Partly it is because it seems as if there is something not quite right about electing someone to a parliament they want to leave.

Notwithstanding that, Scottish politics is the issue to watch. The shortest route to independence is undoubtedly another Thatcherite government with no representation in Scotland.

Trident isn’t even close, though it’s the next best thing.

Since the SNP victory, Nuclear power generators have discovered that there are high costs of transmission to the south of England and new facilities should be in the south, so there is no problem there. Maybe the LibDem policy on Trident will be adopted.

These issues are on the horizon and likely to be more relevant than anything happening right now, but it still is “events” that could make the difference if Labour is unlucky in the weeks before the election.

What Harold MacMillan called “events” can happen in the relatonshp between the two parliaments. Scotland. If, before the election, the unionist parties agree on additional powers for the Scottish parliament, Gordon Brown must at once agree to anything they want and not take any risks if he wants to hang on to his constituency seat.

Nuclear Power plant replacement.
THe Renewable Obligation system review & Onshore vs Offshore Wind.
Heathrow expansion ( or not!)
House building-how many & where.

I wait with interest!

Not only are these phrases essentially carried into Conservative ideas today-they feature in Labour plans & policies as well.As I tried to say a while back-at that time Labour had very effectively “silenced” Tory messages because they had smeared the messenger(s) as “Right Wing/Nasty/ blah blah blah.

Cameron has succesfully removed that gag a) by being a different person to Michael Howard and b) by using different language to express the same message( and significantly by encompassing policies & concerns on social cohesion, environmental matters etc.)
Meanwhile Brown has helped enormously by deciding to move to the right ( as specifically described in a recent Times cartoon-presumably with the blessing of Mr Murdoch) and emulating Tory ideas.

So your “charge” that Cameron was “a key author of the 2005 manifesto” now has no meaning & no effect. The rules have changed.
The answer to your assertion -now-is yes he was-so what?

Reference Cameron’s domestic wind turbine-I agree entirely with you. It was a pointless piece of shameless gimicry-just like Gordon’s solar panels.( & Maggie for tea!)
We cannot fill the energy gap which will be opened when the current nuclear power plants are decommissioned,by wind power or solar power-either domestically or industrially.We have to replace/increase the current nuclear capacity -or our CO2 emissions from power generation will rise as the gap is filled with gas-almost all of which will be imported through pipelines laid across countries full of nutcases just waiting to blow them up.

Don’t forget his boss was Michael Howard at the time.