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.

Britons woke up this morning to the news of a hung parliament. As the results came in, it appeared that Labour would lose just shy of a 90 seats, the Liberal Democrats have lost 5, and the Conservatives have won about a hundred seats more than in the previous election. But no party has won 326 or more seats, the amount needed for a majority.

Constitutionally, in Britain, Gordon Brown may have suffered the worst drubbing since the Thirties, but it still entitled to see if he can form a working coalition. However, it looks increasingly unlikely that even with Liberal-Democrat support he'll be able to do so. Complicating this effort on Gordon Brown's part is the fact that Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal-Democrats -- the kingmakers in this hung parliament -- has said that David Cameron, the Conservative Leader, is entitled to try to form the government as the largest vote and seat winner.

The issue now is who can woo the Liberal Democrats. At 14.30 BST, David Cameron is expected to announce how he plans to do this. Experts suggest that the sticking point will be over electoral reform; Nick Clegg has made electoral reform the price for coalition. Gordon Brown can deliver on that, but David Cameron may be more wary. But Gordon Brown is widely seen as having lost the election, and Clegg might be very unwilling to join a Coalition of the Losers when his own party did so poorly compared to expectations.

Indeed, Nick Clegg's inability to turn his own "Cleggmania" into electoral success for his party is being seen as one of the major stories of this election.

But David Cameron was also unable to "seal the deal." He failed to make significant in-roads in Scotland, and the North of England did not see the sorts of large swings that Cameron enjoyed in the South. And while Labour did worse in Wales, they still held off a three-pronged offensive from the Tories, Plaid Cymru (a Welsh nationalist party) and the Lib-Dems. Finally, Cameron was not able to swing support in Liberal-Democrat constituencies quite the way he did in Labour ones (with Montgomeryshire in Wales being a notable exception.)

As a result, Cameron may only be able to lead a minority government. And experts point to the fact that the last time this scenario happened, there was another election within months.