A canny politician would consider this a good election to lose

Matthew Lynn explains why it could be tactically better in the long run to let the other side win in this general election.

A Tory or Labour government? A David Cameron/Nick Clegg coalition? Or an Ed Miliband/Vince Cable/Nicola Sturgeon lash-up? Going into the last full week of the election campaign, the outcome remains more in doubt than ever. And all the main parties are fighting fiercely. Yet one possibility hardly seems to have entered the debate or the minds of politicians that this might be a good election to lose.

With the benefit of hindsight, you could have said this for several British election contests. The most obvious is 1992. John Major's re-elected government headed straight into Black Wednesday. It took three terms of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for the Conservative's reputation to recover.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.