Conservative politicians and their proprietor friends are determined to make sure that if anyone is going to seize power, its them. If Miliband fails to win the largest number of seats, Rupert Murdochs Times declared on Monday, Cameron should occupy Downing Street, regardless of whether he has a majority in parliament.
Camerons plan, he has let it be known, is to declare victory, cut another deal with Nick Clegg, and sit tight, backed by a media barrage and regardless of whether their parties are outnumbered by an anti-Conservative bloc in the Commons.
But to claim that only a party that wins the largest number of seats can form the government is to turn the parliamentary system on its head. As numerous precedents, the governments own Cabinet Manual rules and common sense dictate, its only possible for a party leader who can command a majority in parliament to put together a government.
If, as the polls suggest, the Tories end up marginally ahead on seats and votes, Cameron can try to form an administration with the support of the defeated Liberal Democrats, the regularly homophobic Democratic Unionist party and the racially inflammatory Ukip. But if they cant reach the effective majority of 323, then it falls to Miliband to assemble a government that can.
If it won the support of a majority of MPs, to reject that government as illegitimate and seek to bring it down would effectively be to support a constitutional coup. But that is exactly what the Conservatives and their friends have made clear they intend to do.
The idea is for Cameron to cling on to power and try to break the resolve of a Labour-led parliamentary majority to vote him down. Even the oligarch-owned Independent, now backing the Tories, claimed yesterday that Britain faced a democratic legitimacy crisis.
