In just four and a half hours today, between 10:30 and 3:00, the question of who would head Britain’s government got pretty well sorted out: it would be Conservative party leader David Cameron. On the election night broadcasts Labour’s Peter Mandelson in effect made an offer to the Liberal Democrats: enter a coalition with Labour and we will support “electoral reform,” i.e., changing Britain’s first-past-the-post single-member-district electoral system (which benefits Labour) to proportional representation. The current system enabled Labour to win 258 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons with 29% of the popular vote, while Liberal Democrats won only 57 seats with 23% of the popular vote. (The Conservatives won 307 seats with 36% of the popular vote.) Prime Minister Gordon Brown seemed to endorse the Mandelson deal in his victory speech in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.

There were a few problems with the deal. The exit poll projection, which various commentators on television (and I) disparaged but which turned out to be uncannily accurate, showed that a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition would fall short of a 326-seat majority. Second, Clegg campaigned as a candidate of change and it would be ludicrous for him to play a critical role in keeping an unpopular incumbent prime minister in office. Third, Clegg had said on the campaign trail that he would ally with Labour only if someone other than Brown were prime minister. But the Labour party process to choose another leader takes weeks to complete.