Kathryn's Guide to the British Election

The Players

This is Gordon Brown.
He was (and technically still is, but we'll get there) the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Leader of the Labour Party. The Labour Party has been in power (had the most seats in the House of Commons) for the past 13 years.





This is David Cameron.
He wants to be (and probably will be, but we'll get there) Prime Minister. He is also the leader of the Conservative Party (AKA the Tories). The Tories have been the main opposition party for the past 13 years.

This is Nick Clegg.
He also wants (but never will be) to be the Prime Minister of the UK. He is the leader of the Liberal Democrats. The LibDems have been the largest of the small parties with something around 60 seats (out of 650) over the past 13 years.



There are various other parties with a few seats in the Commons. Typically nationalist parties in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. While cool and all, we don't really care about them for the purposes of this post.

The Issues

This is the economy.
In case you haven't heard, it's not doing all that well. This is particularly bad for Gordon Brown because before he became Prime Minister in 2007, he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years. Which means he was in charge of the economy. Whoops. Bad luck there, Gordon.



This is the European Union.
The British aren't too sure how they feel about it. On the one hand, it does have some economic benefits. On the other, there are worries about immigration and giving too much control over people in Brussles.





This a moat.
A couple of years ago, one MP decided that the tax payers should pay to clean his, because the moat was in his "second home". There was also an MP who claimed reimbursement to build (and I am not kidding) a duck island. Various other MPs from all three parties were caught claiming for various other things they shouldn't have. Thus, an expenses scandal was born.


Other issues in the debate included the National Health Service, defense, terrorism concerns, and the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, which the UK is playing a large role in.

The Pitches

Gordon Brown argued that people should vote Labour because the Torry plan would be bad for the economy and that the cuts they wanted to make would be detrimental.

David Cameron emphasized change. He wanted to have the people take more control over things that were government run and take responsibility for them. He also pitched something called the "big society" which not a whole ton of people really knew what it meant.

Nick Clegg had some arguments too. Especially involving electoral reform. He wanted to change the winner takes all electoral system the UK has now and instead move towards a proportional representational system. In a proportional system each party is awarded seats based on the percentage of the vote they recieved overall. Many people feel this to be more fair but it can lead to issues like a hung parliament (stay tuned for more info) more often. However, many view the LibDems as the "not" party-- being neither the Tories or Labour.

Each party had other arguments as well, but those were the main ones.

The Background

The United Kingdom is constitutionally required to have an election for the House of Commons every five years, although they can do it earlier if the Prime Minister so chooses. Since Gordon Brown did not so choose, this meant that everyone knew about when the election would be before it was even called. So in April, when the Prime Minister announced the election would be on May 6, the campaigning had largely began already.

For the first time, the UK held American style televised leadership debates between Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Nick Clegg. After the first of three, Nick Clegg was widely considered to have won and Liberal Democrat support went up considerably.

The Results

Of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, the parties won the following number of seats (from the BBC):

Party		Seats	Change	Vote %
	Conservative	306	+97	36.1
	Labour	258	-91	29.0
	Liberal Democrat	57	-5	23.0

The other third parties we don't really care about won 28 seats.

Recall that there are 650 seats in the House of Commons so you need to have 326 seats to have a majority (although technically, you could have 321 because Sinn Fein, which won 5 seats in Northern Ireland refuse to actually take their seats). This means that no one party has a majority (a situation known as a "Hung Parliament"). This is a problem, as we shall now see.

So What's All the Fuss About?

There are a couple of things to note about these results:

1) Despite all of the fuss about Clegg and his popularity, the Liberal Democrats actually lost seats.

2) Labour lost a ton of seats and the Conservatives gained a ton, but not enough to give them a majority.

In order to understand why we care about this, a very short digression into the nature of the British political system.

Since the UK has a Parliamentary system, it means that the Chief Executive (Prime Minister, in this case) is appointed by and responsible to the Parliament-- in the UK's case, the House of Commons. Since the UK still has a winner takes all electoral system, there are usually only two major parties and one of them has a majority. The party that has a majority then gets to "form a government" and choose the Prime Minister and other cabinet Ministers.

OK. Digression over. Since no one party has a majority, the issue becomes very thorny. It means that in order to form a government that will have a majority, there has to be a coalition between various parties.

Constitutionally, Gordon Brown has the right to be the first to try and form a government (hence, he is technically still the Prime Minister). But since the Tories got both the plurality of votes and seats, Nick Clegg says they have the moral right to try first. This is important because it is Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats that either party would be trying to woo.

Another thorn in the mix is that of the Queen. Technically, she is the one who invites someone to form a government, as it is her country and all. However, she is supposed to remain neutral in the whole situation so she has to let the three leaders fight it out before she formally invites someone to the palace to direct them to form a government.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

On Friday night, David Cameron and Nick Clegg met to hash out a deal. Gordon Brown said that, should they fail. He would be willing to talk to Mr. Clegg. Nick Clegg now has to go talk to his party members to get their approval or disapproval. This means that there are a few possible outcomes:

1) The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats form a formal coalition. This means that David Cameron would be Prime Minister but there would likely be a few LibDems on the front benches (in the Cabinet). This is somewhat tricky because the two parties disagree with each other quite a lot.

2) The Conservatives form a minority government. This means that they basically go it alone and would have to make deals with various members of the Liberal Democrats or other third parties to have them vote their way or abstain from each specific vote.

3) Labour and the Liberal Democrats form a formal coalition. They might have to add a few of the other third parties as well, since the two parties together form a plurality but not a majority.

If you forced me to guess, I would waver for a long while and say that either option 1 or 2 were more likely and if option 3 occurred, I am not sure how long Gordon Brown would last as Prime Minister.

So it's all getting very interesting with many of the political pundits in Britain flailing about basically saying "We have no clue what's going on" and the politicians fighting it out amongst one another.

Hope you enjoyed my beginners guide to the British election (I told you I could go on forever). There may be some amusing anecdotes about it later on if I get bored. And feel free to ask any question you wish and I will find an answer somewhere.

Kathryn