Opinion Small change
This was supposed to be an election about change. The Conservatives said they would be a change from the 13 years of Labour Government.
This was supposed to be an election about change. The Conservatives said they would be a change from the 13 years of Labour Government. Their slogan was: Do you want five more years of Gordon Brown? The Liberal Democrats were buoyed by the TV performance of their leader Nick Clegg. They have been advocates for a fundamental change in the electoral system since they get the votes but the votes do not translate into seats. Their vote is too scattered in small clumps across the country while the Labour Party is in urban seats with a huge concentration of votes.
The Lib Dem opinion poll ratings were up to ten percentage points higher than their normal 18/20 per cent. So,through the campaign their leader went on stating the conditions under which they would join a coalition. It seemed their day had come. There were arcane discussions of what combinations could emerge after the vote.
Alas,the people have delivered their verdict. They have mumbled,not shouted. No one is a winner,but the biggest losers are the Liberal Democrats. The exit polls,which are very accurate,came out just as the polls closed at 10 p.m. and the predictions were: Conservatives 307 Labour 255 and Lib Dem 59,the smaller parties around 29. You need 326 for a majority and no one had it. The Labour Party lost 95 seats and the Conservatives gained them. But the Lib Dems were predicted also to have six seats fewer than they had in the old Parliament.
The true situation may be worse than that. The Lib Dems are down to 54 and thus even if they got into a coalition with Labour they wont reach 326. It will also look peculiar if the government was formed by the two big losers. So somewhat like Yudhishthira,the voters have given a naro wa kunjaro wa answer. In this situation,the conventions of the unwritten constitution begin to come into play. The outgoing Prime Minister has to tender his resignation to the Queen first. He can do so only after he has made sure that he cannot form a majority government,which can win a vote of confidence.
He can then suggest to the Sovereign who she should invite. The Queen has her own advisers and of course the civil service is at her side if she needs. Anticipating the hung parliament,civil servants had drawn up a manual on what had to be done. In February 1974,the elections had yielded five fewer seats for Edward Heaths government. He did not resign immediately but tried a coalition deal with the Liberal Party which had 14 seats. The nation had a tense weekend but finally on Monday Heath tendered his resignation and Harold Wilson became Prime Minister.
This time around we have a weekend again. The Conservatives are moral victors and deserve to form the government. The Queen has stayed behind in Windsor and will only come to London when she is needed. The deadline is May 25,when she opens Parliament and reads out the speech written by her Prime Minister. So there has to be a new Prime Minister pretty soon. We now know it will be Cameron with some sort of support from the Lib Dems. Gordon Brown may yet make a desperate attempt to hang on as Heath did but I expect he will fail.
One reason why the two big parties did well and the third party lost may be the pictures on our TV about riots in Greece. People could see that the costs of not dealing with fiscal indulgence can mount up and when it finally cannot be avoided a lot of misery may result. The British people have decided that the party which was open about having to cut the deficit painful though that may be is the party to choose to govern.
The British people and political system find it hard to contemplate coalitions. Lib Dems dream of a proportional representation system which will be a perpetual coalition-type politics. Voters have not liked it. It looks like it may take one more election before the question can be put again. Before that can happen,there is a huge debt to pay off,an economy to revive and economic growth to get started again.
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