What exactly happens in a Hung Parliament?

Question

I'm fifteen and new to politics so forgive me if I come across as a little ignorant, but what exactly happens in a hung parliament? I'd imagine it would be where no party is in charge (or they all share the power) but who would be Prime Minister? Would it be David Cameron, seeing as the Tories have the most seats (so far)? And would it be like this until the next general election in five years? How likely is it that we (in the UK) are going to have a hung parliament?

On a slightly unrelated note, when will we know exactly what's going to happen? I thought we were supposed to find out early this morning.

Answer 1

A hung parliament is when no one party has the 326 seats needed to to gain a majority.



And the constitution states that the incumbent PM (Brown) has the first chance to form a government and if not then the next party with the most seats (conservatives) has the opportunity to.



And the next general election is not necessarily in five years, there is a limit of five years between elections but they can occur in any time between so we could see an election called in the next two years to try get those extra few seats?



It is now certain we will have a hung parliament where we can have a Minority Government or a Coalition government where two or more parties join together to form a government.



we find out who will be the next PM in the next few days, it all rests on Clegg.

Answer 2

PM would be Tory. But anything they tried to vote on in the House of Commons could be defeated by the Opposition. We've had this in Canada since the last Election. What happens here is, the govt has to suck up to one of the opposition parties to get their support on any legislation. So any new laws are sort of "moderate". Also at any point the opposition could force a vote and defeat the govt. When that happens they can call for another election. No-one wants this so soon!

It rather hinges on how much the politicians want to help the country get up out of the mess or if they'd rather just make it a power struggle.

Answer 3

at the same time as no social gathering has over 50% of the seats. case in point contained in the domicile of commons there are 650 seats so if there is not any social gathering with more effective than 325 then it extremely is a hung parliament.

Answer 4

they all forgot their jock straps