According to Mark Byron on the Spero News site our elections will decide the worlds political course. I am flattered, but not quite sure that this really is the case. Mark overestimates the importance of our little island off Europe and of any likely outcome. But, I can only assume that he refers to the Iraq question. The Tory’s were of course in favour of intervention in Iraq but have delighted in some opportunistic bashing of Blair. If they were to win this election, there seems little doubt that the troops would remain in Iraq. But what of the possibility of a hung parliment? I am glad that Mark seems to understand that it is almost unthinkable for the Lib Dems to form a government. Our system is designed for a two-party state and heavily penalises the third party in most circumstances.
Due to a multiplicity of first past the post constinuencies, perhaps like the US the majority of the UK population has the dubious pleasure of knowing it really makes no difference how they vote in this election. For most of my adult life I have lived in what is termed a “safe” seat. Thus, currently the only question in my area is how big a majority the Tories will win, and will Labour gain enough votes to regain its electoral deposit. In the same manner, I have previously lived in an area of london where the same questions were asked in reverse!
Where it gets interesting is in threeway battles for seats. Where each party has a chance, tactical voters by supporters of one party to enable the other to get in is frequent. This is what gave Labour its massive majority- people voted to get the Tories out, and the Lib-dems actually benefited from our system.
As to possible coalitions, this is rather interesting. The Lib-Dems are the more natural historical bedfellows of labour but have denied categorically that they would shore up a labor government. They would be likely to insist on some form of electoral reform to do so- they want a PR system which would give them the casting vote very frequently. The prospect of a tory-labour coalition is so remote on national level to be as unthinkable as a Democrat-Republican coalition in Congress!
If there is no clear winner my money would be on Blair attempting to continue leading a minority government and constantly looking to other party’s MPs for support. He is of course no stranger to this already and there have been a number of votes already which would not have passed without the support of MPs from other parts of the house. If this attempt was unsuccessfull, another election could be called at any point- we dont have fixed terms.
The election is too close to call, but I suspect that the Tories have too big a hill to climb to establish a clear majority- particularly if the Lib-Dems show strongly. In those situations, they too would have difficulties gathering a coalition together- we are not a terribly coalition prone political system. Blair is lucky that the opposition to him is split as Mark rightly says- antiwar sentiment will only find a home in the Lib-Dems. Howards attempts to move the Tory party to the right of labour have felt more clumsy than the Lib-dems drift to the left.
Elections in the UK are generally won from what is perceived to be the centre-ground. When one party makes itself unelectable by being too extreme one way or the other (eg the labour party during the Thatcher years) the other party is largely unstoppable. Perhaps the fact that Labour have challengers on both flanks will actually make them more electable. If either the Lib-Dems or the Tories are trailing in a poor third place in a seat, their voters are likely to turn to Labour if they wish to tactically.
I just wish the nation was getting a bit more excited about this opportunity to excercise our democratic rights. After the mudslinging of the phony war the “real” election is looking surprisingly boring at the moment. For news coverage, I would recommend the BBC News site. So far only the Tories have issued their manifesto.
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