The outcome of the May 2015 general election is the first problem. It is not shaping up so far into the kind of clear majority outcome for the Tories or Labour that they might have hoped. And the likely halving of Liberal Democrat MPs means that their attractiveness as coalition partners will fall radically. Their ability to feasibly go into coalition is also evaporating.

The LibDems have just five Cabinet ministers now with 57 MPs. With (say) 25 MPs, their bargaining power in any future government and ability to shape decisions would also be halved. Another Conservative-Lib Dem coalition where they controlled only three Cabinet posts would be fatal for the party’s appeal – they would be irretrievably absorbed into the Tory image, like their National Liberal forerunners of the 1930s. A Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition is their only hope of any keeping alive remaining voter perception of the party as centrist or balanced. But little groundwork has been done by either side to make this happen.

There is thus a good chance that the 2015 election outcome may not fall out in a way that makes anything but a minority government feasible, especially if the government has to be viable at a UK level and an England level. Within the Conservative party a second failure to win a clear election majority is likely to prove terminal for David Cameron’s weak and question-postponing style of leadership, especially with Boris Johnson returning to the Commons. We can’t see yet all the possibilities down this track, but there are gathering signs that an inconclusive 2015 general election would not mean another five year Parliament lasting to 2020, but perhaps another election by 2017 to try to resolve matters.

A second possible outcome from 2015 is that Ed Miliband emerges as Prime Minister with either a tiny Labour majority or the prospect of an ‘easier’ coalition with the Liberal Democrats that could sustain his government for five years. With the Scots MPs still safely behind him, his position on UK-wide issues (tax, social security, defence, foreign affairs) would be assured. But the English legislation problem would assume significant proportions by 2017, especially with Johnson as Tory leader and a possible pepped up UKIP capacity vying to challenge the government as champions of the English interest. There would be no European Union referendum, however, and in many ways a secure Miliband premiership now remains the best prospect for UK economic and social stability to 2020.

A third possible outcome from the 2015 general election is that Cameron does well enough either to win a Conservative outright majority, or to coerce the Liberal Democrats into a coalition renewal (despite the doom it threatens for them) or some other ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement. If Cameron returns as a secure premier, he will have to deliver on his Brexit referendum pledge on whether the UK stays or leaves the European Union in 2017. The Scottish referendum has shown how coercive referenda are as ways of resolving issues where citizens’ whole identities and major parcels of rights are involved. The same will be true of a Brexit vote. If after all the acrimony, the UK votes to stay in the EU then a degree of economic policy stability might return.