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19 November 2010

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Britain Gets a

Coalition Government

 

An inconclusive election leads to a marriage

between the right-wing Conservative Party

and the centre-left Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems)

 

The United Kingdom’s new Prime Minister David Cameron (above) has appointed the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, as his Deputy Prime Minister; other members of the Lib Dems have also been given seats around the Cabinet table.

 

This is an unusual arrangement for Britain following an election (May 6, 2010) in which no party was able to win the 326 seats needed for a clear majority.

 

The Conservatives won 306 seats with 36% of the popular vote, the incumbent Labour Party took 258 seats (29% of vote), and the Liberal Democrats elected 57 members (23% of vote). Twenty-eight seats were taken by regional and minority parties.

 

Bargaining Followed Ballot Indecision

The election result put Nick Clegg and his Lib Dems in the position of being able to decide which of the two main parties would govern the country.

 

Five days of bargaining followed as Labour’s Gordon Brown and the Conservative’s David Cameron courted Clegg’s support.

 

In the end, says BBC News (May 12, 2010) “A deal with the Tories was reached on Tuesday that resulted in Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown resigning.”

 

Compromises Bring Agreement

Going into the negotiations the two parties were quite widely separated on a number of issues. Each had to give up some favoured policies to get a deal.

The Lib Dems gave up:

• Nuclear disarmament;
• Amnesty for illegal immigrants;
• Continued government stimulus spending; and,
• Closer ties to the European Union.

 

The Conservatives gave up:

• Increased employee and employer contributions to national insurance;
• Abolition of an inheritance tax on expensive homes; and,
• Opposition to electoral reform.

 

Tensions within and between Parties

Both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have internal conflicts. The left wing of the Lib Dems is made up of old socialists who want nothing to do with the right-wing Conservatives.

 

Blogger Janet Watkinson writes (May 11, 2010) “as part of the more left-wing part of the party, I can never support a Lib Dem/Tory coalition. I genuinely think this is the start of a serious destruction of the Lib Dems…We are going to be the soft face of a nasty government.”

 

Likewise, the right wing of the Conservative Party wants no truck or trade with the Lib Dems. A group called the Conservative Way Forward issued a statement (May 12, 2010): “We do not believe a formal coalition with the Lib Dems is an appropriate way forward that would produce the necessary stability our country needs.”

 

Keeping their respective outer wings happy will be a tricky task for the two leaders.

 

The Hard Work Lies ahead

Britain is in an economic mess. Unemployment at 8% is at its highest level in 15 years. The government’s deficit in 2009 was £159 billion ($240 billion), which amounts to 11.4% of Gross Domestic Product.

 

The U.K. Office of National Statistics reports that “At the end of December 2009 general government debt was £950.4 billion ($1.4 trillion), equivalent to 68.1 per cent of GDP.”

 

The terms of European Union membership “set deficit and debt targets of three percent and 60% respectively for all EU countries.”

 

Getting these numbers under control will be very difficult and will call for painful measures. Taxes will have to increase and government services will have to be cut.

 

Some have suggested the action needed to dig the country out of the glue will make the party that does it so unpopular it might get elected for a generation.

 

Sources

“Election 2010.” BBC News.

“David Cameron Faces Backlash from the Conservative Party Right.” Robert Winnett, Daily Telegraph, May 12, 2010.

“The Joy of Coalition.” Andy McSmith, The Independent, May 12, 2010.

 

© Canada and the World, May 2010

All rights reserved

 

ALTERNATIVE VOTE

 

One of the major concessions Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg (left) got from Prime Minister David Cameron was a promise to act on electoral reform.

 

The Lib Dems want a system of proportional representation, which would greatly increase the number of seats they would likely win in elections.

 

What they got was a promise to hold a national referendum on a system called Alternative Voting (AV).

 

The Electoral Knowledge Network describes this: “Rather than simply indicating their favoured candidate, under AV electors rank the candidates in the order of their choice, by marking a ‘1’ for their favourite, ‘2’ for their second choice, ‘3’ for their third choice and so on.

 

“…a candidate who has won an absolute majority of the votes (50% plus one) is immediately elected.

 

“However, if no candidate has an absolute majority, under AV the candidate with the lowest number of first preferences is ‘eliminated’ from the count, and his or her ballots are examined for their second preferences. Each ballot is then transferred to whichever remaining candidate has the highest preference in the order as marked on the ballot paper.” This transferring of votes continues until one candidate has at least half the votes plus one.

 

The system is used in Australia.

 

If the U.K. adopts this or some other form of proportional representation that would leave Canada as the only parliamentary democracy in a developed nation using the First-Past-the-Post method.