Let me begin by congratulating you on your book-buying pattern. I do promise, as I told you before we began, to fill you in on how much of my advance I had to refund.
Thank you for the question.
It is true, of course, that people ought to give the mandate to govern. The issue is, who is that mandate given to? In a parliamentary system, the mandate is given to Parliament and it is for Parliament to form a ministry.
It's true that polls didn't support the coalition initiative in 2008, one of the reasons it collapsed. It is also true that the same polls don't find a majority in support of the current government. That being so, I think we need to find a way to conduct the nation's business in a more orderly and less contested fashion, in which these issues of constitutionality and legitimacy are not thrown around as political tools and the debate returns to where it should be, which is what is the best ministry that can command a majority of the House?
We have just learned again that the mechanism of coalition per se is not illegitimate. Your co-religionists in Britain have just formed a coalition with the Liberal Party, conceivably quite a solid coalition with relatively clear government principles. So the mechanism is clearly not illegitimate. The people of Britain did not vote for a coalition of Mr. Cameron and Mr. Clegg, but it is not a bad government that has been formed, or an illegitimate one.
If I can just finish this thought—