And the winner is....?

So the public have voted - most of us anyway, if we assume the irregularities at some polling stations to have been an aberration - and for the first time in over 30 years, we have no clear outcome. Or do we?

While we have no clear winner in a traditional way; no party can form a majority, we can see that Labour has lost and that the overwhelming majority of people voted for change. Those of us who voted Tory did so directly to get rid of a discredited and bumbling Labour government. Those who voted Liberal Democrat did so to get rid of that same Labour administration, but to replace it with a different form of change, one aimed at picking up some of the strings of the current administration but in such a way as to make significant changes to the country in which we win.

So we can see there is a majority in favour of change, it's just not clear what sort of change. So the task for those parties on the 'winning' side of the national argument is to distil their arguments into a central programme of change, compromising certainly, but focussed on fundamental change to the government of Britain. Yes, that means looking seriously at electoral reform, for it's own sake as much as to allow a programme of change to be formed, but it also means a change to our collective political mindset.

If Nick Clegg and David Cameron can arrive at a situation where they focus on the importance of change, they can each look to where Tory-Lib Dem coalitions have delivered change - Birmingham and Bradford for example - and turn this conundrum of uncertainty into a productive government able to deliver what the people of this country have called for; change.