SNP just short of 50
Lib Dems 30
UKIP 3
Greens 1

Hoping SNP/LAB (ulikely) or LAB minority.
Can see CON/LIB again though.

I'm still predicting CON/LIB-DEMS

I'm sincerely hoping against LAB/SNP

Like the British Parliament, I'm well hung. Sorry. As you were.

Are you saying that if Britain were, in some way, to become Anarcho-Communist the markets and businesses we depend on and that bring us the benefits of globalisation would stop operating there? Not being faecitious, just don't want to answer an argument you didn't make

Even if it's the status quo of CON/LIB-DEMS?

The longer it takes to form a government, the more chance the markets have of falling. Political uncertainty causes market instability.

Without wanting to get into a debate about an EU referendum, the uncertainty it would create is enough to put me off having one.

Well, let's hope it goes alright for you people tomorrow. Funnily enough, miracles can and do happen - we just had one yesterday. That said, no one's particularly enthused about anyone's platform this time.

They usually are spot on, though in 1992 all polls predicted Labour to win, and somehow John Major got a majority for the Tories.

I think with today's polling, it is generally more sophisticated and accurate what with digital media and all that, but this election is so volatile and exceptional to ones previously that it *just might* catch the polls by surprise.

A lot of undecided voters you see, but if I was to bet on it, I'm thinking these undecided are going to be all alone in the voting booth later on and mark 'X' next to the Conservatives as they see them as the risk averse option - that's not me endorsing the Tories, it is simply because polling suggests voters see the Tories as the strongest on the economy, and if there is one mantra that will forever ring true in politics...... "It's the economy stupid!".

A mate who I trust said to me;
“You know what this election boils down to? Who do you want to be protesting against on May 8th?
Or whenever they finish counting, negotiating and posturing?

David Cameron and a Tory coalition or Ed Miliband and one led by Labour?”

I suppose, implicitly my argument has always been – the Tories – let them wrench out the organs of the nation with such ferocity and contempt that usually phlegmatic people are dragged into the war against the establishment by the dreadful, eviscerating G-force.

The conservatives are such cinematic villains, the Etonian gits with their Freudian slips; the “West Villa United” supporting, “career-defining”, Darth Vader toffs. If you’re auditioning for heads on spikes “come the great day”, there’s no competition.

Like the fierce and exciting Nicola Sturgeon, or anyone with ears, I thought the difference between the two main parties was insufficient. Ed Miliband’s campaign manager, David Axelrod – a more appropriate name for a spin-doctor it’s difficult to imagine – he may as well be called Zach Huxter, is the bloke who delivered unto us Barack Obama; a tidal wave of potent promise that became a drab damp patch of disappointment. If that doesn’t induce a sigh of impotent lassitude you’ve got more “Yes We Can optimism” than Rolf Harris’s art dealer.

In the episode of The Trews in which I interviewed Ed Miliband there is no Damascene moment. I did not tumble back in a white beam of enlightened reverie, scales falling, realising that the Westminster machine, with a different pilot will serve ordinary people. We decided to endorse Labour before we approached them for the interview.

The simple truth is I don’t have a “ready to wear” system of government to offer people on May 8th and neither does anyone else I’ve yet spoken to.

My fundamentalist abstemiousness became untenable because of mates making practical pleas of varying import;

1. “My brother has MS, if the Tories get in, his independent Living Fund will be cut and he’ll have to go in a home or move into mine…”
2. “My kids can’t do a production at school because of budget cuts…”
3. “My daughter can’t go to university because we can’t afford to pay a student loan back…”
4. “Our drug treatment day care program is being shut down due to cuts…

In the grand scheme of Revolution these are small problems, I agree, small problems that can be somewhat assuaged with the small solution of getting rid of the Tories.

Ultimately what I feel, is that by not removing the Tories, through an unwillingness to participate in the “masquerade of democracy”, I was implicitly expecting the most vulnerable people in society to pay the price on my behalf while I pondered alternatives in luxury.

The reason I didn’t suggest it sooner is because, twerp that I am, I have hope. I really do believe that real, radical change is possible that the tyranny of giant, transnational corporations can be ended, that ecological melt-down in pursuit of imaginary money can be arrested and reversed, that an ideology that aspires to more than materialism, individualism and profit can be realised and practiced.

People that know a lot more about this than me, and probably you, advised me that we’ll be better off rucking with a Labour government than a Conservative one – if that strikes you as a pitiful choice, more sympathetic I could not be – but some people are facing much worse dilemmas than reneging on a puritanical political stance.

Does this country need a radical new political movement? An equivalent of Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain? It feels like it does and when the next administration fails to deliver because of the limitations of parliamentary politics I’ll happily participate in setting it up. With you.

Do we need an international confederation of new political alliances that are committed to real change, real democracy, a revolutionary alternative to capitalism? That can challenge the IMF, WTO, WBO and all the other global acronyms so portentous and phony they may as well be the wrestling federations they sound like? Of course we do, my schedule’s pretty clear, I’ll join in. Will you?

What Ed Miliband said on The Trews that seemed positive is that his government will be responsive to activism and campaigning. That will be pretty easy to evaluate quickly. Are media monopolies being broken up? Are the urgently needed houses being built? Is austerity continuing? Is the NHS still being privatised? Are we still blaming immigrants, the disabled and disadvantaged for massive economic problems that they can’t have created? Is domestic policy being dictated by unelected elites in the financial and corporate world?

If the answer is yes then you know that democracy in its current form is near redundant, that we are not offered reasonable alternatives and that parties that try to, like the Greens are stymied to the point irrelevance by ancient electoral architecture.

My position will not have changed on May 8th, I’ll be doing my best to amplify movements I believe in, from housing, to trade unions, football fan campaigns, social enterprises, digital activism, student occupations, organic agriculture, crypto-currencies; the same things I’m doing today, the things I’ve been learning about for the last 18 months; since I said I don’t vote on the telly.

My recommendation that people vote Labour is an optimistic punt that the degeneration of Britain will be slowed down and the lives of the most vulnerable will be a little more bearable than they’d’ve been under the Tories.

Nothing more ambitious than that.

It will take serious activism, committed action comparable to the sacrifice of those whose memories are continually evoked as a spur for us to vote. The women who died for that right, the people all over the world branded terrorists and imprisoned or executed for demanding democracy.

I fully understand that real change, real democracy is not something that can be palmed off in a booth twice a decade, a crossed box and crossed fingers. Democracy is for life, not just elections.

By Russell Brand

Not quite - the debt and deficit are two different things remember.

The deficit has been halved since the Tories came in - remember the deficit is how much we are spending compared to what we are receiving, so the Tories have cut spending enough to half what Labour had been spending. That is of course where austerity comes in - cutting spending. Another way is raising taxes to cut the deficit - but that's not a Tory position - if the Lib Dems were a much stronger party with more seats, we may have seen the highest earners pay a bit more in taxes, but we have to remember they were only a minority partner with very limited influence.

As we continue to run a deficit, the debt keeps rising and rising, as it is doing now, As soon as we start operating a surplus where we as a country are making a profit, only then will the debt be reduced. The Tories argue that they are cutting the deficit, which they believe indicates they are on the right path to operating a surplus. Their argument is that the SNP and Labour will raise the deficit again like Gordon Brown had done.

I know!! They ALWAYS play that card and repeat it over and over and loudly so that people start to believe it must be true.