Brown Toast: Election fun from across the pond...

Conservatives now above 300 seats, though they will not get an overall majority.

Clegg says he'll talk to the Conservatives first, with Brown saying he's ready to talk to Clegg if things don't work out. Brown's already promised the electoral reform the Lib Dems so badly want; they're unlikely to get it from the Tories, though it's possible the Tories could agree to hold a referendum, then campaign against it.

 

Into the fifth day after the election and still no government. For a while it looked like the Lib Dems and Tories would form some kind of coalition, either with the Lib Dems being given an active role or in something called supply and confidence, whereby the Lib Dems would agree to support a Tory budget and not to instigate a vote of no confidence.

Then yesterday Gordon Brown said he would step down as Labour party leader, ostensibly to pave the way for a Lib Dem-Labour coalition with a new (unelected) prime minister. He also promised the Lib Dems that he would put into law the electoral reform they so desperately seek; the Tories have promised only to hold a referendum. Tory apoplexy was predictable.

The Lib Dems probably have until the end of today to make a decision; if they haven't, people are going to start turning on them and demanding to know exactly why a party that got 57 of 650 seats gets to make the rules up as it goes along. The longer it lasts, as well, the worse the Lib Dems' electoral reforms are going to look, inasmuch as they would likely guarantee that most, if not all, future elections would fail to produce a majority for any one party.

 

Maybe it's because all three parties are basically center-left to left, as opposed to our parties, but the role the Lib Dems are playing fascinates/confuses me.

If the Lib Dems were to form a coalition with the Tories, that seems analogous to me of Ralph Nadar not only syphoning of votes from Al Gore, but actually forming a coalition with George W. Bush to give him power.

Am I way off? Wouldn't such a coalition turn actual liberals against the Lib Dems?

What's their motivation? Is it all about Gordon Brown and if so, is it personal or political?

 

You're off in that you're under the assumption -- and it's one that a lot of people draw -- that the Liberal Democrats are to the left of Labour, which they're not. Remember that the word liberal doesn't have quite the same connotation here that it does there. So whereas Nader was far to the left of Gore, the Lib Dems are somewhere to the right of Labour, though exactly where no one quite knows. Their policies are something of a hodge-podge.

However, you're not so far off in the notion that, yes, I think forming a coalition with the Tories would turn some people against the Lib Dems. How many is anyone's guess. The Lib Dems tend to be a lot of people's second choice/protest/tactical vote (this is why they're so big on the alternative vote). That means that in the south of England, for example, people vote for the Lib Dems to keep the Tories out, but in the north of England, they do so to keep Labour out. In other words, if the Lib Dems form a coalition, they're gonna piss someone off.

A lot of it is about Gordon Brown -- he's something of a polarizing figure and there are a lot of people who don't like him.

I'm not entirely sure I'd call the Tories a centrist party, either. If you want to call the modern-day Republicans center-right, then I suppose you'd have to call the Tories centrist. But I'm not sure I'd call modern-day Republicans center-right. (Not trying to start that argument -- just providing a comparison.)

 

That's helpful.

I guess that, while I knew your parties were more tightly packed together, I did think the Lib Dems were to the left of Labour.

You wouldn't say the Tories are as right (politically -- ha-ha) as the Republicans are would you?

 

To be honest, I thought that too when I first really started paying attention.

By and large, no. But I do think some of that, at least, is a matter of political expediency. I think there are still a good number of Tories who would prefer to be against, say, gay rights, but they've recognized that the majority of the population just doesn't feel that way. Remember: Britain is one of the most atheistic countries in the world (I think it's something like 7% of the population goes to church even once a year), so a lot of the socially conservative stuff just doesn't play here.

But economically, I'd say they're close to the Republicans -- they certainly were in the 80s under Reagan and Thatcher. And the Tories are generally opposed to greater integration with Europe, which there are certainly similarities to with the Republicans.

As far as the social construct of people who vote for the party, there are some differences. The white working-class vote, particularly in the North, which is probably the most similar to the American South, tends to go for Labour. The Tories get the middle- and upper-class vote and have always been viewed as the party of the posh, which is thoroughly backed up by the fact that David Cameron's an Etonian. (That Nick Clegg is also posh was rather glossed over -- except, of course, by the Tory media. )

 

OK, last question(s) for now...

The House of Commons has 650 members. That's a lot more than the U.S. House of Representatives -- especially in proportion to our relative populations.

I suppose that's just historical?

And, does -- in your opinion -- having each member represent far fewer people make it easier for third parties to gain traction and get their members elected?

 

BBC now reporting that Labour has given up.

Pretty sure it is historical, yeah. There's a lot of remnants from various bits of history still scattered through the system. And in theory, it should lead to more success for smaller parties, but in reality it tends not to. Britain just became the last country in Europe to have a Green Party MP, for example. The actual effect tends to be more along the lines of neighbo(u)ring constituencies electing politicians of very different stripes. You don't typically have to go very far in the U.K. for places to be pretty significantly different. And people often don't GO very far, for a lot of reasons.

I'll give you an example of that: A friend of mine came to visit last year, and we wanted to play Scrabble. (Because we are dorks.) So we went to the local Tesco to try to find a board, but they were sold out. So she asked, as an American would, where the next nearest Tesco was, so we could try there. I had no idea. Still don't. Because people don't DO that kind of thing.

So when it comes to places, a little bit of distance can make a great difference. Take, for example, Portsmouth and Southampton. Both on the South Coast, probably 20 miles apart, both with shipping/naval histories. But they're extremely different places (that hate each other, particularly when it comes to footie). They're just not particularly similar at all.

People talk a big game when it comes to the small parties, but in reality, what they really want is for someone ELSE to vote for the little guys. Because if their constituency does it, all of a sudden they find themselves marginalised. And though that's not AS big a deal as it is there, it's still fairly important.

 

An article in the Guardian today (no link, read on day job software system) argued that economic theory on auctions suggests that the Libs and Labs would be daft to form a coalition and that each party's best choice was to let the Tories form a minority government and take the subsequent heat for its decisions.

 

Pretty much. Whoever gets in is going to have to make cuts of such a deep and painful nature that there are those who say that party will be out of power for a generation.

 

The instinct of a politician to hold office, stronger by far than the biological urge to reproduce, appears to have swayed Clegg and the Libs into the Tories' arms.

 

I reported from London (for a tiny little news service no one has ever heard of) for about five years. Almost everybody who I ever talked to about him thought he was a headcase.

The thought he's going to spend the next few months/years glowering impotently from the back benches is heart-gladdening.

But the MOST important thing about this election is that New Jersey born and bred (to the age of nine) Brooks Newmark was easily reelected as the Tory MP for Braintree...