"The rules are the rules," one Labour adviser said – regardless of the political argument about legitimacy that Cameron may make.
A Labour-led coalition will lack legitimacy in England and, if it is governing from a clear second-place, it might be better to seek a second election than to first walk into power and then into oblivion.
The legitimacy of legislation used to deter terrorists depends, like all law, on popular consent.
O'Donnell said it was clear there would be reasonable debate about political legitimacy if the Tories were the largest party but did not form a government, partly due to the presence of a large Scottish Nationalist contingent, but he pointed out voters had in two referendums rejected both a shift from first past the post and Scotland leaving the union.
"They have been elected by people's votes but now that they want to put democracy under question, they argue that legislation and legitimacy should come from somewhere else - and that somewhere else is the 12th imam".
Autocratic leaders across the former Soviet Union have been known to dispatch "quid pro quo" observer missions to each others' elections to lend them legitimacy.
However, Abdullah was perhaps the first Saudi ruler to seek a new legitimacy, this time emanating from serving the people rather than simply applying divine law.
Pioneering, inclusive and celebratory, the NVA redefines the video game arcade, and moves the medium closer to a cultural legitimacy that has, to date, proved elusive.
Amid recriminations over US and western European interventions in Kosovo, Libya and Syria, the Russian leadership has begun to question the legitimacy of the international agreements on which the current European order is founded.
If Greeks voted to stay in the euro, Berlin could claim democratic legitimacy for a tough reform programme encompassing pensions, tax, wages and privatisations.
Two prominent MPs, Labour's Tom Watson and the Conservative David Davis, were in the London high court last week challenging the legislation's legitimacy.
