Politically hung?

With the General Election edging ever closer, the fear of a 'Hung Parliament' is sweeping both Whitehall and the rest of the UK.

So.... What is a Hung Parliament?

A Hung Parliament is created when no party has achieved an overall majority of seats in an election. Seats are occupied by MPs representing individual constituencies across the country, if no political party has more than half of the seats in the House of Common- a hung parliament is created.

However, an here's the confusing part, even though no overall majority is achieved, the party with the most seats will be asked to try to form a Government. For example, there are 650 seats in the House of Commons (not counting 'The Speaker and his deputies') and for an overall majority to be achieved 325 or more seats have to be won by a political Party. So if the Conservatives were to win 326- they would hold the majority and form a Government.

So the party who doesn't hold an outright majority- yet still has the largest of number of seats in the Commons will be asked by Queeny to form a Government. The best chance for a Government to be formed this way is for the party (e.g, Tory) to form a coalition with a smaller party (e.g, UKIP)- this would then form a Coalition Government- similar to that of Germany. The Coalition Government would then have to reach a 'happy medium' on policies and other such aspects of Government.

However if this cannot be achieved, then Parliament has to be dissolved and another election takes place. This has only ever happened once before in the last 100 years, it occurred in 1974 when no outright majority was achieved when Labour held 301 seats compared to the Tories' 297. A minority Government was formed but lasted a short while before Parliament was dissolved and another election happen in October.

If a 'Hung', 'Coalition' or 'Minority' Government was formed after this election you can expect for their to be some rather heated debates in the Commons as parties push for their own agenda to be put forward.

Maybe the Queen is in for a busy year because of this...