What happened: For years after Tony Blair swept into office, the Labour Party has held a majority of Parliament, and the Conservatives have been rather unorganized. The Labour administration tired recently, though, and looked set to lose the next election, which is why Gordon Brown delayed calling it as long as possible. Unfortunately for the Conservatives, they’ve stumbled through some recent scandals. More importantly, Nick Clegg performed rather well in the first ever televised debate between party leaders, scrambling the election from the usual British process. Pro-Labour papers even sided with the LibDems.
What this means: Typically, the British fill more than half of Parliament with Conservatives or Labour MPs (Members of Parliament). This means that the party leader becomes prime minister, and can shove his/her agenda through without much trouble. However, the Liberal Democrats are doing well enough that no party will likely end up with a majority; that results in a “hung parliament”. This can result in somewhat chaotic politics (as in Israel) or relatively stable ones (Canada’s is in its fourth year). Hung parliaments have only occurred twice in 20th century Britain, though, so the press is wary.
What to watch for (on BBC, natch): Watch to see if the Conservatives do better that the 37% vote share in the polls — that’s the only real chance that Britain will have a clear winner tonight. If their vote gets to 40%, the Conservatives will win enough seats to form a stable majority government to the right of the current one.
If Labour comes in third in vote share, things will really be crazy. Even though
Prime Minister Brown gets first crack at forming a stable government as the incumbent, he’d be hard-pressed to find enough allies negotiating from a position of weakness. (Labour gets more seats per vote than any other party, so their seat total won’t really reflect their strength.) If Labour gets bronze, expect an informal (and I’d say temporary) alliance between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives.
The British National Party is a far-right, anti-immigrant unit hoping to come in fourth tonight in vote share. Reaching that level will not usher them into any power, but lead to some serious self-examination in Britain.
The BBC doesn’t like us non-Brits watching online. C-Span3 has the feed, though.
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p>Exit poll shows the Conservatives just short of majority, LibDems actually losing seats. Looks like they’re a non-factor, yet again…
at least, I’ve watched a video or two on the front-page of BBC News. The BBC Video Player, though, while awesome, will block IPs that come from outside the US (coughfoxyproxycough).
I meant this comment to be a reply to sab’s comment. oops.
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p>I was going to start another main reply to say that the exit polls have been somewhat surprising so far — for whatever exit polls are worth, Clegg doesn’t seem to have been the one to lead the Lib Dems to contention after all. They’ll still probably be a part of the ruling coalition, but the Tories probably won’t need as many of them as once thought. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_…
I’m pretty sure there has been a coalition government between LibDems and Labour in the past. It seems they are closer to each other than either is to the Tories, which makes sense considering they are historically a split of the same party. Regardless of what order each party places I can easily imagine those two getting together to form a majority and shutting out the Tories, unless of course the latter gets an outright majority. If the Commons can’t work it out on their own the Queen could more actively intervene and even theoretically call another election as an absolute last resort.
Here’s the tricky part, though:
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…with someone other than Brown leading? Would Clegg work with someone else? Also, I haven’t seen the results yet – what happened?
Clegg is negotiating with Cameron, but they’re just too far apart on anything of substance. The alliance would not last.
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p>I’d expect a Lab-Lib coalition eventually, once Brown is replaced with Milliband.
Unless Cameron is able to be pragmatic and control his base’s intense opposition to any kind of electoral reform, Clegg is in no position to form a coalition with Cameron. That said the narrative of the media is that Cameron is the ‘winner’ of the election. The new narrative some Lib and Lab MPs are using is that since 15 million voted for there party and 10 million for the Tories that Briton really voted for a ‘progressive majority’ but a lot of the mainstream press is not buying that. Using that same logic a majority of the British people voted for a prime minister that would not be Gordon Brown, and combining that logic leads us to sabutai’s right conclusion. I see no way a Lib-Lab coalition can occur without Brown going away, at least for Clegg to save face. He can’t save face with the tories since they oppose electoral reform, and he can’t save face with labor since the public just overwhelmingly rejected Browns leadership. That is the only way for them to go forward. I am also unsure if the Lab can quickly hold a leadership race in this interim period.
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p>Either way if they don’t resolve this soon pressure will mount on Cameron from within his party and from the media and outside observers to just govern with a minority. This will stabilize the markets and the government temporarily while also putting him in the politically advantageous position of delivering on a few promises while ultimately blaming the other parties for whatever setbacks he gets. Britons want stable government first and foremost and are allergic to coalitions as a ‘continental’ phenomenon and will likely give Cameron a majority when his minority government inevitably falls and there is another new election-possibly within a few months of this one.
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p>Minority government has worked for Britain in the past under Wilson and has survived in Canada for nearly five years under Harper.
At this point I think minority government is the most likely outcome, according to wiki most leadership elections take several weeks and I don’t think Brown is willing to step aside without a fight.
So the guardian points out that if the Prime Minister steps down during an interim period the cabinet ministers pick who among them would be the new PM. Front-runners are Miliband as sabutai pointed out, and Harriet Harriman. Clegg is reluctant to form a coalition with Brown and Labor leaders are quickly trying to oust him to make their side palatable to him. The downside to this is that Britons having just soundly rejected a PM they didn’t vote for would be stuck with another PM they didn’t even indirectly elect.
Granted, it was going to happen either way, but Labor is in no hurry to vacate the government benches, it would seem.
Also Cameron has given on allowing an electoral reform referendum. So I would say the LibDems should just join Cameron and get a government quickly. At this point they got what the wanted, and withdrawing from the negotiation to get Labor makes it seem that they acted in bad faith. Also Britains do not want the Lib-Labor coalition since it would rely on nationalist parties to govern. The Conservatives pointed out that if the Lib-Labor coalition goes through then the British people will have had a second ‘unelected’ PM in three years. I would argue all their PMs are inherently ‘unelected’, especially since it is unclear who the Brits want as PM now. But the media seems to be seizing upon the notion that Cameron ‘won’ the right to be PM, Clegg already conceded they had ‘won’ the right to negotiate first, and now he has gotten what he wanted. For him to abandon the Conservatives would make him look bad, especially since he has no idea which PM he will get with Labor. Though Brown is definitely a true lame duck at this point. Its really sad because he could have been a great Prime Minister, but I think all those years in Tony’s shadow turned him into a bitter man and he became accustomed to getting what he wanted without having to earn his power.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared…
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p>hope link works