The Conservatives have been scaremongering about a hung parliament again, claiming [2] it will lead to "paralysis at the top", a "lack of accountability" and a "political stitch-up". Hey, why stop there? Why not also claim that a hung parliament will lead to pestilence, plague and biblical Armageddon [3]?

I happen to agree with the calmer analysis produced by Peter Riddell of the Times [4]. Hung parliaments, he argues, can be "made to work" and can produce "effective" coalitions. He points out:

Many countries most highly rated for good government, such as Germany, New Zealand and the Scandinavian nations, have multiparty rule.

One country where a hung parliament hasn't, however, been good for business or for the nation as a whole is the one we recently (and illegally) invaded -- Iraq [5]. And, reading Patrick Cockburn [6]'s piece on the "Iraq election row [7]" in the Independent today, I couldn't help but notice the rather odd parallels between the Iraqi parliamentary elections and our own (minus, of course, the Mesopotamian violence, bloodshed, corruption, vote-rigging and sectarian hatreds).

A bit of background: the 7 March parliamentary election [8] in Iraq produced a hung parliament in Baghdad [9], with no single party or grouping securing a majority. The incumbent, Nouri al-Maliki [10], has been described [11] as "difficult to deal with, quick-tempered and deeply suspicious of others". Who does that remind you of?

Right now, he is trying to cling on to power despite coming second in terms of share of the vote, if not seats. To stay in office, however, his governing State of Law party needs the support of its ideological and sectarian allies in the Iraqi National Alliance (INA), which came third in both seats and votes. But guess what? The anti-American Shia faction led by the "firebrand" cleric Moqtada al-Sadr [12] is the single largest party in the INA, and the Sadrists, says Cockburn [7], "are adamant that Mr Maliki step down as prime minister".

So is Nick Clegg -- having said at the weekend, "You can't have Gordon Brown squatting in No 10" -- Britain's Moqtada al-Sadr?