Lovely, thoughtful piece by Alan Massie in the Spectator in which he dissects the Tory ‘arguments’ against a balanced Parliament.

Tory warnings of the dire consequences of a hung parliament are understandable but, I suspect, unfortunate. There is little evidence that the electorate believes that a hung parliament will be a disaster, far less than they can be cajoled into thinking that they’re letting Britain down if they don’t vote Conservative.

And that, my friends, is the underlying message sent by the Tories’ blitz against a hung parliament.

A hung election might not be ideal but it might also be a fitting end to this exhausted, depressing parliament. But it need not be the disaster the Tories claim. The PDF they released today – and the advert – is thin gruel. Essentially they argue that 1974 was a disaster and this proves that hung parliaments are and always must be a terrible thing. Secondly, they say that many city types worry about financial uncertainty if no party wins overall control. Thirdly, the Tories warn that anything that moves Britain down the road to proportional representation is a bad thing because it's a bad thing that always ends badly.

I particularly like the argument that we shouldn’t have a balanced Parliament because it might upset those nice chaps in the City.