A BBC newsreader told us this morning that the Liberal Democrats are considering a share-powering deal. For a second I thought perhaps Nick Clegg had been caught insider trading, but it was merely a spoonerism brought on by a combination of tiredness and confusion. The BBCNews website must be ruing the day it chose an election strapline with the promise of ‘Making it Clear’.

One thing the post-election power broking is not doing is powering the markets – be that shares, currency or sovereign credit. The thing I admire about fluffy people who are wrong most of the time is their absence of either shame or anxiety when proved spectacularly wrong. In turn, I heard Polly Toynbee, Ben Bradshaw, Simon Hughes and Vince Cable last week dismissing the idea of a hung Parliament producing market turmoil as ‘disgraceful Tory scaremongering’.

Being a more noisy person myself, I am quite happy to fess up to a couple of huge errors in Slog predictions: that UKIP would poll well, and that the Tories would get a 20-seat majority. So at the risk of sounding like Gordon Brown on the subject of gold futures valuation, here are my extenuating circumstances, otherwise known as excuses:

1. I think until Nick’s surge, UKIP were doing extremely well. In Buckingham, I know they were, because I had access to canvassing returns. But Clegg’s army of ‘new’ voters were very probably those who wanted to protest against the controlling lies and anti-libertarian instincts of both the EU and British Establishments…by either not voting or choosing a fringe Party. However, despite a pretty pathetic showing across the UK, Farage’s Army still increased their vote by 50% over 20o5.

2. The Slog’s 20-seat majority prediction was based on two things: a poor turnout for Labour, and more voters turning up to vote LibDem than actually did so. During the last days of the campaign, I think Bastion Labour mentality came into play – a mood I understand entirely. Seeing their religion being battered to death by a media set determined to remind everyone of how weird the Pope is, some lifelong faithful turned up to defend the catholick church that is The Labour Party….up to but not including Gillian Duffy.

As to the phantom Cleggies, I’m not sure we’ll ever get to the bottom of why they drifted away from Slick Nick. With all the figures now in, I know the LibDems upped their popular vote from 18 to 23% – so some newcomers stayed true to answers given to poll fieldworkers. But with a turnout originally projected at 55%, the real level – 66% – makes one wonder what happened. Imagine dragging that many people into a contest to support you, only to find that nine out of eleven defect to the other side. It was a truly bizarre outcome.

Two outcomes that gave me great pleasure were first, the resounding defeat of Gorgeous George Galloway in Poplar & Limehouse; and second, the fact that – despite being returned as Mr Speaker – the awful John Bercow did so with the worst performance in the history of Parliamentary Speaker elections. Losing one in five voters to John Stevens, one in seven to Nigel Farage, and one in twelve to Patrick Phillips, Bercow wound up with 53% of the electorate voting against him….a figure that precedent dictates should be zero.

On any kind of moral basis, the Speaker should see that as a vote of no-confidence, and resign. He won’t of course, so all those in Slogger’s Roost offer instead a vote of thanks to Patrick Phillips, a former High Sheriff who helped enliven the Buckingham contest while remaining both the nicest and oldest candidate on display.

Patrick turned 75 last weekend, and without any organisation behind him at all polled a very creditable 2,400 votes. Somebody should tell Lloyd-Webber that there is a great musical in this, working title The Sheriff of Buckingham. I doubt very much if Mr Phillips us up for playing himself in tights, but perhaps Sean Connery might be attracted to the role.