6th of May

My primary interest as of now is the hotly-contested British general election that will finally be resolved(?) in thousands of voting booths across the country on May 6.

I use a question mark because all polls indicate that May 6 will in fact not be the end of the political manoeuvering due to the very likely possibility of a hung parliament resulting. This means that no one party will achieve an outright majority in seats in the House of Commons. And because Britain uses first-past-the-post and is historically led by a single party government at a time, this is making it a particularly hairy and touchy situation.

The Labour Party has been governing since May 2, 1997, first under the initially popular Tony Blair, who, ten years later, was forced to resign due to increasing unpopularity and tensions within his own party. His Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, took office in June 2007, and Labour's fortunes in the polls were raised for about four months. In October 2007, feelers were put out by Labour to test the waters for a snap election to capitalize on the gains made in the polls. In the end, Brown decided against it, and in doing so, probably botched any future possibility of a Labour win under his leadership. I'm betting here that Labour comes in third in the popular vote and second in its number of seats.

The Conservative Party has been out of government for thirteen years after governing for a period of eighteen years under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. They are led by David Cameron, 43, who has done much for raising the party's stature in the polls since becoming leader following the 2005 general election. For most of the past four years, the Conservatives have led in the polls, yet have fallen far since November in public opinion. Most polls show them leading, but only by a few percentage points hovering around 34 percent. I believe that the Conservatives will take first in seats and number of popular votes, but still be too far to have a majority.

Enter the underdogs. The Liberal Democrats have been around since 1988, and before that were an electoral alliance of two parties, the SDP and Liberals, the latter being the atrophied remnants of the Liberal Party that had so many successes and several prime ministers between 1859 and 1922. Labour basically stole the center-left battleground from the Liberals, and have ever since been been playing catch-up. Their time has come. I like the Lib Dems. I would vote for them if I were British. But I will not let my biased opinion bias my analysis here. 2010 is the first election providing a three-pronged, three-round leaders' debate between Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat. Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, picked up a huge swing in the polls following the first leaders' debate. Many people got to meet him for the first time on April 15. So the Lib Dems went from polling around 20 percent to leading the polls at 33 or so, then leveling out for the past two weeks around 28-31, behind the Conservatives, but ahead of Labour. My guess is that they will achieve only third place in seats, but their popular vote will be second, slightly ahead of Labour.

Therein lies the rub: first-past-the-post works just fine if two parties are the only ones to ever contest any election. But because Britain has basically a two-and-a-half party system, Labour and Conservative have a better distributed vote than a party like the Liberal Democrats. This setup produces highly skewed and unfair results. Let's take the 2005 election as an example. There were 646 seats up for grabs in the House of Commons. Labour took 35.3% of the popular vote but received 55.1% of the seats for an automatic majority. The Conservatives got 32.3% of the vote but 30.6% of the seats. The Lib Dems managed 22.1% of the vote but took only 9.5% of the seats.

The Lib Dems have for years supported a dramatic alteration in the electoral system of the United Kingdom, and I believe rightly so. Their policies on the economy, foreign affairs, education, civil liberties, and immigration are all informed by a high sense of what is fair and what is not. I would love to have them win and form government, but I think everyone knows they won't get that far this time.

What is much more likely is that they will be asked to help and/or support either Labour or Conservative in forming the next government due to a lack of majority all around. There seems to be much personal anathema between Clegg and Brown, making the probability of a pact/alliance/coalition/whatever between the Lib Dems and Labour unlikely should those two remain the leaders. Clegg has come out publicly in denouncing a "squatter's government" in 10 Downing Street who got only third in the popular vote but managed an unfair plurality of seats in the Commons.

Which leaves the Conservatives, whose policies, save for some concerning economic measures and social liberties, seem to be quite different from the Lib Dems', who tend to come closer to Labour's ideas than those of the Conservatives. It would be quite interesting for David Cameron to approach Nick Clegg about forming some kind of deal between the two parties.

And it may well happen.

But I don't think so.

My guess is that the Conservatives will take a plurality in votes and in seats, will kick out Gordon Brown and replace him with David Cameron, and will then try to go it alone, without outside help from any other party. The last time something similar to this happened was when Labour led a minority government following the no-majority results of the 1974 election. And like 1974, I also think that the Conservatives will dare, in a sense, Labour and the Lib Dems to attempt to topple their government and trigger a new election, where again the hope will be for a majority.

I wouldn't put the next general election in Britain beyond eighteen months. Come November 2011 it's bound to happen.

Just my thoughts on the matter for now. Time will tell.