This is it! This is it!

Only two and a half days till the UK election!

Don’t worry, this is not a party political broadcast. In the interests of preserving Business Monitor International (BMI)’s impartial status, I will not endorse any party ahead of the election. What I will do is offer a brief and perhaps somewhat cynical guide to Thursday’s landmark vote. I should mention that this is merely the view of one jaded analyst, and does not necessarily reflect BMI’s position as a whole. You are free to interpret it as you wish:

• Opinion polls don’t matter that much. As clichéd as it is, I agree with politicians who say that the only poll that matters is on voting day. Several recent polls have put all three main parties within the margin of error, and with so many new voters registering, and many still undecided, anything can happen.
• Manifestos don’t matter. I have long believed that you should vote for whichever party’s manifesto you most disagree with, on the basis that politicians do the opposite of their stated goals once in power. At best, manifestos are only a very rough guide to a party’s policies. Also, bear in mind that ‘reality’ can force unexpected policies. A good example was the US in 2008, when a conservative, pro-business US president nationalised key American financial institutions. In the case of the UK, the Labour Party’s nationalisation of banks in late 2008 was merely fulfilling one of the promises of its 1983 election manifesto, which was described as the ‘longest suicide note in history’.
• Whoever wins will have a weak mandate at best. According to my interpretation of latest opinion polls (ignore for a moment my first bullet-point downplaying polls), 67% of voters do not support a Conservative government (though even greater numbers do not support a Labour or Liberal Democrat government). Some commentators in Britain criticised the US election in 2000 in which the candidate with fewer votes formed the new administration, but this could easily happen here.
• That the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats aren’t doing better in opinion polls (again, disregard point 1) after everything the UK has been through in recent years is a damning indictment of the state of confidence the electorate has in the political class.
• A coalition government would hardly be the end of the world – although I admit that there is great uncertainty as to how it would work in the UK’s Westminster system of government. In many countries, coalition rule is the norm, and given the low poll numbers in circulation, it is something that we in the UK may have to get used to.
• Regardless of which party wins, it will probably take much more than one parliamentary term (typically five years) to sort out the UK’s problems. I am not merely speaking of the economy, budget deficit, and national debt. I am also talking about issues such as crime and policing, which have not featured as much as you’d expect in the campaign.
• Don’t expect too much say in how the country is run, post-election. By this I mean that once the government is elected, and especially in the event of a coalition, much of the decision-making will take place behind closed doors.

• Fasten your seatbelt for a bumpy ride.