As a child I learned that a mixture of red, orange, green and other colours gives a dirty brown mess. Now it is beginning to look as if a mixture of parties with these colours (but not blue) will lead to a messy Brown government, at least for a few months. Gordon Brown has announced that he will go by the autumn, after a successor has been elected. So it looks as if he will not so much resign as fade away, like an old soldier, and his successor as Prime Minister is more likely to be a Miliband than a Cameron.

But will this messy government last? I don’t see why not. The pro-Conservative press has been repeating the opposite so often that people (such as Phil Ruse in a comment at Clayboy) are starting to believe it, but it is not true: a parliamentary alliance between Labour and the Liberal Democrats will not be hopelessly unstable.

Let’s look at the figures. Here is the new composition of the House of Commons:

Is there is a new pact between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, it will have 315 seats. Then include its Northern Ireland allies SDLP and Alliance which give it 319, or 320 with the likely support, at least tacitly, of the Green MP.

To defeat it requires an alliance of Conservatives, DUP and SNP for a total of 321, or 324 with Plaid Cymru, assuming Sinn Fein and the Speaker stay neutral. SNP at least will be terrified of supporting the Conservatives and precipitating a Cameron minority government or a new election. But without nationalist support the Tories have only 315 votes and so no chance of defeating the “progressive alliance”.

So it seems to me that, as long as their own MPs don’t break ranks, a coalition of Labour and Lib Dems is likely to be quite stable. It should certainly be stable enough to do what needs to be done to stabilise the economy, as presumably the Conservatives would not want to precipitate an election on such matters. It might not be able to get through Parliament some of its more radical ideas, but perhaps what we need now is stability rather than radical change.

As for the argument that this government would lack legitimacy, that is nonsense. Under the current electoral system as supported by the Conservatives (they are now offering a referendum on a kind of change but would campaign against it) the winner is the grouping which can command a majority for the Queen’s Speech. It looks like Cameron cannot. Brown may be able to, and that looks like making him the winner.

While all eyes have been on the General Election, in much of the UK (but not here in Chelmsford) there have been local elections. I thank a Facebook friend for letting me know through his status, and the BBC website for confirming, that the British National Party has lost all twelve of its seats on the London borough council of Barking and Dagenham. This is in addition to the BNP leader Nick Griffin coming in a poor third place, with his share of the vote reduced to 14.6%, in the Barking parliamentary constituency which he had hoped to win.

In fact this time Labour has taken all 51 seats on the Barking and Dagenham council, as two Conservatives and five “others” have also lost their seats – or is there some story here I am not aware of?

I am glad that the people of Barking and Dagenham have shown their true colours, which are not those of the BNP. The reason for their success at the previous local elections in 2006 was probably that most people who don’t like them stayed at home. This year, they came out to vote because of the general election on the same day.

The moral of this is that if you care who represents and governs you, whether locally or nationally, you must make the effort to turn out and vote.

The Evangelical Alliance, of which I am a member, has issued a press statement concerning the election result, quoting Steve Clifford, their General Director, as saying:

I think that we realise difficult decisions will have to be made and the level of public services we are used to may not be sustainable.  But in taking these difficult decisions I ask that whatever form the Government takes they remember what was asked of the apostle Paul, to remember the poor.

I welcome this statement. It is indeed vital that any government of this country, or of any other, remembers the poor, both at home and worldwide.

But it is rather late in the day for Steve Clifford to make this appeal, one which should have been heard more clearly from Christians during the election campaign. It was implicit in the Faithworks 2010 Declaration which I reported on during the election campaign. But the poor merit only a brief mention in passing in the Westminster 2010 Declaration, which I also reported on, and no mention at all in the pledge which that group asked election candidates to sign – it seems that the pledge was simply to

respect, uphold and protect the right of Christians to hold and express Christian beliefs and act according to Christian conscience.

Yet this is the Declaration of which “Steve Clifford – General Director, Evangelical Alliance” is listed as one of the Key Signatories, in fourth place following three bishops. And this is the Declaration whose backers, as I pointed out a couple of days ago, were clearly using it to promote the Conservative party – the party which was campaigning for higher taxes and reduced public services for the poor, and tax breaks for the super-rich.

I don’t know if the Westminster Declaration had any effect on the election result. Its 61,234 signatories (as I write) are a tiny number compared with nearly 30 million votes cast. They were not successful in getting Philippa Stroud into Parliament, but other candidates they backed were elected even when this was not the expected result.

But surely it is somewhat perverse for Steve Clifford to give his backing, and implicitly that of his Alliance, to a campaign which was in effect to elect Conservatives, and then after the event call on them, as the likely next government, to embrace a policy of remembering the poor which goes against their manifesto commitments. He would have done better to avoid endorsing in the first place a Declaration as unbalanced as the Westminster one. If his repentance now is genuine, that is good. But it is too late for this election, and so he may have put himself, and all the Christians in this country, in something of the position of Esau in Hebrews 12:17.

A month ago I wrote, not very positively, about the Westminster 2010 Declaration of Christian Conscience. I always had my misgivings about the lack of balance in this Declaration, which correspond to what I wrote a few days ago about issues of Christian principle at election time. To summarise, the Declaration seems to have largely ignored the real issues in this election, and the issues of poverty and social justice which ought to be of top priority for Christians.

So I was not really surprised to read, initially from Ruth Gledhill and also in their own latest news report, how the true political colour of the Westminster Declaration has now come to light. Now they write:

Westminster 2010 is not party political but concerned solely with conscience issues.

But their true leanings towards the Conservative party, if not already clear from their selection of issues to campaign on (and from the list of key signatories, including the husband of the controversial Conservative candidate Philippa Stroud), become clear from the list of preferred candidates which they have now issued:

Preferred candidates include 192 Conservatives, 35 Liberal Democrats, 19 Labour, 2 SNP and 2 Independents. Tories come out on top because in general their MPs have better past voting records on Christian conscience issues …

But let’s examine how they came to their conclusions in two constituencies.

In my own constituency of Chelmsford, the sitting Conservative MP Simon Burns is being strongly challenged by an excellent Lib Dem candidate Stephen Robinson, with the Labour candidate Pete Dixon likely to take a poor third place. Westminster 2010 is bold enough to “prefer” the Conservative. But on what basis? None of these three candidates have made the Westminster 2010 pledge, nor have any of them explicitly refused it. The Westminster 2010 preference seems to be based entirely on the sitting MP’s past voting record. But that is a quite unfair basis of judgment because the other candidates, who have not been MPs, have no known past record to be judged.

Then let’s look at another constituency, Sutton and Cheam. Here there is a Christian Peoples Alliance candidate who has signed the Westminster 2010 pledge. But Westminster 2010’s preferred candidate is a Conservative who has not signed it – although she is Philippa Stroud (with her name mis-spelled).

So, in the words of the Facebook commenter quoted by Ruth Gledhill,

it’s quite clear what you’re saying…”vote Tory.”

I’m glad I didn’t sign up to this Declaration. I urge my Christian readers to think twice before following the group’s recommendations, and to bear in mind what I wrote a few days ago:

So, how should Christians vote on Thursday? I don’t suggest that there is only one correct answer. But I do say that all Christians need to think about these issues of social justice as well as about those of life and personal morality, and need to base their vote on what the various candidates and parties are actually promising to do on these issues.