The general election campaign kicked off in earnest this week, yet the likelihood of an inconclusive outcome refuses to recede. As a result, commentators are turning their minds more seriously to what happens if, as seems possible, both main parties are stuck on 290-odd MPs and no one minority party has enough MPs to produce a coalition with a working majority.
To pre-empt any potential impatience in May, Gus O’Donnell, the former Cabinet Secretary, has been at pains to point out that coalition formation could take a lot longer this time than in 2010: he even went on to suggest that the next Prime Minister might not come from the party with the most seats in a repeat of the 1923 election.
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