It’s barely past noon on the first working day of 2015 and election fever has already struck. The airwaves are currently being dominated by coverage of Ed Miliband’s election launch speech in Salford, the gathering of Tory leadership hopefuls (the full set if you subbed in Boris for Hague) in a misty London skyscraper and a somewhat sparsely-attended speech by Nick Clegg in Westminster (spare a thought for the political hacks). With Sky News journalists already pounding the streets of the marginal seats, here at Pagefield we thought we may as well stick our necks out and give our own predictions about what May 2015 will hold.
In what is being billed, barring a political earthquake, as the most difficult to call election in generations we felt it best to give the chance for some of our team to have egg on their faces while others smugly crow about their psephological genius. So here we have some bold ‘finger-in-the-air’ predictions about who will be in power come May 8th (or, more likely, several days later).
Oliver Foster
“Cameron will continue as Prime Minister of a minority Conservative government, with voting support from UKIP and the Ulster Unionists, and occasionally the Liberals. There will be enough Tory backbenchers who want to prevent Cameron from another formal coalition with the Liberals that will make that impossible to get through.”
Benjamin Thiele-Long
Labour/Lib Dem Coalition
Tom Bage
“I’m going to stick my neck out, and go for a Labour-led loose Coalition/confidence and supply agreement. #WeBackEd”
Lucy Holbrook
“My bet is on a Labour minority propped up by whoever they can muster support from be it the SNP, Lib Dems, Greens and/or the DUP in Coalition”
My back of a fag packet predictions point towards the following breakdown:
Conservative: 261
Labour: 310
Lib Dem: 25
SNP: 30
Greens:1
UKIP: 3
Others: 20
Benjamin Winter
Labour/Lib Dem Coalition – “An aggressive Tory election campaign will take its toll on Miliband’s already precarious public image, ensuring that Labour will not be able to gain a majority. Labour will have to go into coalition with the Lib Dems, who will claim that they are a centre left party after all. Clegg will inevitably be sacrificed in this instance, with Farron gaining the Deputy PM role.”
Craig Westwood
Labour-led Coalition
Poppy Rosenberg
“With limited confidence, I’m going to go ahead and place my bets on a Lab/Lib Dem/ SNP Coalition”
Nathan Jones
“It is with a heavy heart that I am predicting a Conservative minority Government in May… Although statisticians continue to point at a relatively persistent narrow Labour lead in national polls, I just can’t currently see Ed Miliband walking into No. 10 in May”
Geoff Duggan
“As Janan Ganesh recently pointed out “this election is an unpopularity contest between two parties talking to themselves”. Given concerns about Labour’s economic competence and doubts about “Red” Ed’s leadership I wouldn’t be surprised to see a continuation of the status quo – a Conservative/Lib Dem coalition (albeit with a much less comfortable majority). ”
Florence Quirici
“A Conservative majority with 329 seats. I believe in miracles!”
Sam Oakley
“I said a year ago that it would be a small Labour majority of perhaps 5 seats. I no longer believe they will have outright control but there will be enough of a Lib Dem rump and sympathetic nationalists that will see Ed Miliband become Prime Minister.”
So there we have it – a Labour-led, perhaps informal, Coalition seems to the barely-reached consensus in our office. Feel free to tweet us with your thoughts!
