The election
With almost all the votes counted, it is now almost inevitable that the UK will embark on its first hung parliament since Heath led the Conservatives to a minor majority in 1974. This has been a fascinating election to watch.
After a difficult decade in power, the Labour party were always going to have their work cut out in maintaining power. The feeble handover of leadership from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown, that played far more to Blair’s sense of ego than it did to the interests of his party, was probably a fatal wound. It delivered a man who sadly lived up to a population’s fear of being a flawed statesman, incapable of engaging an expectant public actively seeking change.
During the campaign, none of the major parties advanced a compelling rationale for public support, but with pressure lying squarely on the incumbent in political climates such as this, the promise of a ‘change at the top’ has been sufficient to drive public support behind the shadow party.
This election also saw the introduction of US-style live debates, which helped to inject some consequence and intrigue into what would otherwise have been a pedestrian campaign. David Cameron’s inability to capitalize on the lacklustre performance of his key rival likely saved Gordon Brown from what could have been a far-worse defeat yesterday. Indeed it was disappointing to see Brown deliver arguably the best political speech of his entire career on Tuesday, mixing controlled anger over poverty and injustice with a type of free flowing religious rhetoric rarely heard in British politics. What could have been, if this version of Brown had turned up for the debates.
We also witnessed the emergence of genuine potential for a break from the two-party system that has defined British politics for the last hundred years. But despite Nick Clegg’s impressive oratory performance, swinging the mindset of the average British voter away from the “a vote for the LibDems is a vote for <insert shadow party here>” mentality was a stretch too far.
In the event, no party won a majority, and crucially, the combined seats for Labor and the LibDems did not add up to enough to form the coalition government that Brown must surely have been pinning his hopes on - a partnership that would at least have seen an alignment of political ideals.
Brown is left with two avenues (he remains the Prime Minster up until the Queen’s declaration, and as such, retains the right to decide) - concede to a Conservative-LibDem pairing, or call a second election. Although neither option is immediately palatable, the financial cost and public resentment to a re-run makes that pathway highly unlikely. Perhaps Brown can find solace in the former outcome, resting hope that the opposing pillars of 19th century liberalism and 20th century socialism that underpin these two parties will create an insurmountable tension that may ultimately lead to permanent fracture.
And so what of a hung parliament? While the British public has remained inanimate, the press have been scaremongering an agenda of poisonous stalemate - a situation that will cripple any forward progress against the country’s badly needed social and fiscal policy reforms. I am not sure that I see the problem - countries like Germany have been managing change under a system of proportional representation for decades, and I imagine that whomever the next British leader ends up being, they would gladly trade our current political and financial status quo for that of theirs.
