Jason Jorgenson is an old friend of Fat Man After Dark. He is a Brit currently exiled by the Time Lord High Council to the United States and is a proud Scottish Tory. He has a love for parliamentary procedure, buffets, and the non-word irregardless.

After a four-week election, voters in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are going to the polls to elect all 650 Members of Parliament (MPs). Gordon Brown, leader of the Labour Party is hoping to remain in power, but David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives (often called Tories) and Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats are each campaigning to succeed him. Just as in the United States, Britain uses a system called First Past the Post, where the candidate in each constituency (i.e. a district in the US, or a riding in Canada) who wins the most votes wins the seat. This means that nationwide polling is not always an effective way of determining the winner, since it is in effect 650 local elections rather than one nationwide election.

Polls going into the election seem to indicate that David Cameron, the Eton-educated Tory leader may get his wish as he seems set to get at least a plurality with a small chance of an outright majority. By convention, the leader of the largest party is entitled to try to form the next administration. But the unprecedented surge in support for Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrats might complicate Cameron's ambition. Clegg unexpectedly captured the electorate's imagination during televised debates between Brown, Cameron and Clegg. These debates, common for American presidential candidates, have never been done before in Britain. With the support Nick Clegg has received from his debate performance, the election has become a three-way race for the first time in recent British political memory, and has added increased uncertainty to the outcome. Meanwhile, Gordon Brown, the incumbent Prime Minister entered the election deeply unpopular. His Labour party has ruled Britain since 1997 when Tony Blair took control from the Tories. His attempt to retain power has been hampered by gaffes and missteps, including a now infamous incident where he was caught on an open mic calling a voter a "bigot."

If the current polls hold true, then experts predict no party will have an overall majority, a situation known in Britain as a "hung parliament." Although the convention would seem to indicate that David Cameron would be invited to try to form the administration, the papers in Britain have all printed different scenarios where Gordon Brown could lose the election and still cling to power, usually by doing a coalition deal with Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats. Similarly, the papers have speculated about ways David Cameron could govern as a minority administration. The scenario most often described in the press is one where Cameron would rule with the help of the smaller Northern Ireland Unionist parties.

The drama and the uncertainty surrounding the outcome promises to make this one of the more interesting elections to watch. Assuming that early polling is correct, I predict the following outcome.

Tories: 320

Labour: 214

Lib Dem: 81

SNP: 9

PC: 4

DUP: 8

UUP: 1

SDLP: 3

SF: 4 (won't take their seats)

Independents: 4 (1 of whom, in Northern Ireland, looks likely to win, and has said he'd take the Tory whip)

Speaker: 1 (he faces some opposition, but it would be unprecedented if he were unelected)

Outstanding: 1 (due to the death of one of the candidates (from the UKIP), the seat of Thirsk and Malton will be filled on May 27, but this should go Tory when it does)