As I write, opinion polls predict a three-way split in the election result. The most widely quoted precedent is the 1923 general election, which ended with the Conservatives getting 42 per cent of seats, Labour 31 per cent and the Liberals 26 per cent. Soon after, Labour formed its first government. Why did this happen? Why didn't the two old parties form an anti-socialist alliance against the usurpers?

One important reason was that the Conservatives fought the election on a proposal to re-introduce tariffs on imported goods, and the Liberals were traditionally the party of free trade. But there was another reason, less often acknowledged. Labour, formed to give the workers a voice in parliament, was already being taken over by the middle classes. In 1918, nearly all Labour MPs were working-class trade unionists; by 1923, barely half of them were.

Those elected included, for example, Charles Trevelyan, a Northumberland landowner, and Arthur Ponsonby, once a page of honour to Queen Victoria. So the ruling elite, with King George V to the fore, welcomed an increasingly "respectable" Labour Party to the corridors of power - albeit temporarily - and established it as a legitimate contender because it closed off greater threats. For similar reasons, big business welcomed New Labour in 1997.

Dem and Gus

If there were a Lab-Lib Dem coalition, what would it look like? The problem would not just be one of sharing the posts between the two parties but of satisfying the factions in each, particularly the Brownites and Blairites in Labour. For that reason - I'm assuming Labour gets more seats than the Lib Dems, but not necessarily more votes - I predict the consensual figure of Alan Johnson would emerge as prime minister, with Nick Clegg acquiring all the jobs and titles presently held by Peter Mandelson. Vince Cable would be chancellor, with David Miliband continuing as foreign secretary, Ed Balls becoming home secretary.

Then, I suppose, senior jobs would have to be found for at least one Labour and one Lib Dem woman (Harriet Harman, Yvette Cooper, Sarah Teather and Julia Goldsworthy being the main candidates). These might be called token women but, unless they accept tokens, women won't get anything at all. Chris Huhne, Clegg's main rival for the Lib Dem leadership, would also need a prominent job. Unless they take quite junior cabinet positions, Mandelson and Alistair Darling would be out.

Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, would presumably hold the ring and tell everybody how to conduct themselves while all this was sorted out. One way or another, O'Donnell seems to have been in power for more than 20 years, and it's reported that he has just written the previously unwritten British constitution in anticipation of a messy election outcome. Perhaps it would be simplest to make him dictator.

Saint Nick

Indeed, the parties may prefer an O'Donnell dictatorship. Since any new government would have to introduce sharp public spending cuts and/or tax rises, the opposition party would be in pole position. A Lab-Lib Dem coalition would surely guarantee the Tories victory in the subsequent election, whatever the electoral system. I sometimes wonder if the explanation for this peculiar campaign is that nobody wants to win. Perhaps Clegg's success - and his being allowed to appear in the TV ­debates at all - is a carefully laid plot by the other parties to put him in Downing Street. This month, the favoured theme is “I agree with Nick"; next month, as the parties ­contemplate who should try to form a government, it may be "after you, Nick".

Remote controlled

Almost everybody agrees that the TV election debates are an unqualified success. I am not so sure. True, viewing figures suggest surprising numbers of voters took the opportunity to tune into serious, sustained political debate and Nick Clegg's performance has introduced uncertainty into the contest. But there is something strangely muted and bloodless about this campaign. One longs for John Prescott to turn up and punch somebody. The TV debate format, with its rigid rules of procedure and constrained audiences, requires the party leaders to be absurdly polite to each other. The debates have been decreed so important by the media that nothing else gets much attention, and the spin doctors, always hovering in the TV studios, keep closer control than ever. The election is thus drained of passion and spontaneity.

Joe Public versus the volcano

When Aneurin Bevan set up the NHS, he decreed that if a nurse dropped a bedpan in Tredegar, the reverberations should echo round Whitehall. Now, if a British child sneezed in Tenerife, the government would be expected to send a crack medical team. The affair of the Icelandic volcano and the closure of UK airspace is a marvellous example of how ministers must always try to control events, even if they are none of their business. The proper ministerial response was to say that safety decisions are a matter solely for technical experts and that, if Britons are stranded abroad, it is the airlines' responsibility to find ways to get them home.

Instead, ministers promise to send warships, fleets of coaches and, given another week, probably a nuclear submarine. When none of these arrive, the ministers look foolish. When Andrew Adonis, the Transport Secretary, in a pathetic attempt to claim credit for the resumption of flights, appears alongside the aviation authorities to announce the lifting of the ban, he lays himself open to charges of bullying them into it. If a plane now falls out of the sky, ministers will take the blame.

Peter Wilby was editor of the New Statesman from 1998-2005