The one thing you can predict about an election is that the result won’t be as you predict. Before this year’s election Labour expected a drubbing at the polls, while Lib Dems expected to increase their numbers and to hold the balance of power. The Conservatives expected to swing in to Number 10 with a clear majority and Plaid Cymru expected to increase their number of seats to hold real power in a hung parliament. None of this happened, at least as expected.
Some politicians have talked about the “hand that the electorate dealt us”. But the electorate isn’t a single entity with a single voice. Understanding any community involves listening to differing voices and then applying principles and values in deciding what to do. So it isn’t only about reaching a compromise.
Every representative of a major party stood on a manifesto that set out the pledges and policies on which we stood for election. That is a personal responsibility as well as a collective one. And whether your regard this Parliament as hung or balanced, people will judge it on two grounds. Have MPs made life better for all of us, and did they do what they said they would do. So this new Government will be judged by how it deals with events – but citizens will also ask whether they got what they voted for.
Clearly very few Conservative voters had ever dreamed of Nick Clegg joining them and few Lib Dems would have hoped to see David Cameron in Number 10 after the election. Those who dreamed of a progressive coalition have been disappointed, will it all end in tears? Well, only time will tell but what will certainly continue is the daily work, hard but rewarding, of listening to constituents and taking up cases. That said of an MP’s work doesn’t make headlines but it remains at the heart of the job.