The single greatest surprise of the British general election is that it happens so fast. Britain is home to 61 million people, more than 44 million of them registered to vote. How could anyone dream of replacing the government of a country this size in little more than a day? Yet this is what happens. The election takes place on a Thursday and, if the government is defeated, by lunchtime Friday a removal truck is standing outside 10 Downing Street, while a brand new prime minster hovers with his suitcases. In comparison to the United States, where the transition takes three months, the agility of the British system is remarkable. But when one considers the age and decrepitude of so much of Britain’s political life, this turn of speed looks miraculous: like discovering that your Grandmother is challenging for a place in the Olympics sprinting team.
The British take a special pride in parliamentary government because they believe they invented it: The Victorian politician John Bright famously claimed that, “England is the mother of all parliaments.” But if modern democracy first developed in England, it has not continued to develop there since. The system is old; reputedly older, even, than the English plumbing system. Yet, as anyone who has visited the UK could point out, the time comes when it makes sense to replace the pipework. British politicians finally agreed modernization might be necessary in 2009, following a parliamentary expenses scandal. For years, Members of Parliament (MP) had chosen to inflate their expenses rather than increase their salaries. As parliament is self-regulating, the system was hugely and flagrantly abused. MPs expected to be recompensed for the most outlandish claims – there was a claim for a tiny doll’s house in which one MP planned to keep his pet ducks. The public were outraged when they learnt that many MPs were speculating on the London property market, buying houses for rental or quick resale, and leaving voters to pick up the mortgage payments.
The Labour government has been in power for 13 years. It is natural to want change and the expenses scandal has sharpened the public demand. Early in the election campaign, the great symbol of change became the leaders’ debate. Before 2010, the British had never seen a home-grown, live televised debate and, out of curiosity, almost 10 million viewers tuned in to watch Prime Minister Gordon Brown face the Conservative leader, David Cameron. However, in their enthusiasm to recognize the desire for change, the two parties had allowed the often-forgotten Liberal Democrats to join the debate. After the assured performance by Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, the other parties were left looking at their election strategy like parents looking at their house after leaving a teenager alone for the weekend. Everything was in ruins, and no one is sure if it is a short-term surge of hormones or a sign of worse to come.
The first week of campaigning established that May 6, 2010 would be the most open election that anyone could remember, and the first ever three-way race. This is so remarkable because the British system is designed to squash any deviation from the two-party system. A British general election is, in essence, 650 separate mini-presidential races. In each race, the winner is the one who receives the most votes. Technically, this is known as Single Member District Plurality (SMDP) voting, but everyone calls it “first-past-the-post”: as long as your nose is first across the line, it does not matter if you beat the next guy by an inch or 60 yards. Long ago, when the mother of parliaments was a fresh-faced child, these individual representatives began to organize themselves into parties. As the party system developed, it exploited flaws in the SMDP system, flaws which favor regional bases, secret pacts and gerrymandering. It is perfectly possible for the party with the most seats to have the least number of votes: just imagine that one party won by a nose in 326 races, yet did not even show up in the other 324 races! It happens, sort of. In 1929, the Conservatives edged ahead of Labour by a single percentage point, but lost the election by 27 seats. Again, in February 1974, the Conservatives picked up a slim 0.5 percent majority of votes and lost by four seats. If this situation has never caused outrage, it is because these anomalies only occur in close elections. More usually, a win by a few percentage points translates into a big majority of seats, and provide the UK with stable governments that lead as though they had won huge popular mandates. Indecisive elections can always be re-run (as the above examples were, in 1931 and October 1974, respectively). The British electorate are quick to get the message: Do not mess around, vote for the party you hate the least and forgot the third choice.
Over time, successful parties deepen their geographical base and the weaker parties are squeezed out of the picture. Today, the Conservatives have zero support in Wales or Scotland, despite representing a clear strand of Scottish political thought (the strand that likes running banks and does not absolutely loathe the English). Labour has no support in Cornwall despite local factors such as unemployment and poverty that are big Labour issues elsewhere in the country. The overwhelming problem for Liberal Democrats is that they have broad geographical support and come second in hundreds of seats. They are perpetual challengers, and their hopes of ever winning are perpetually deferred.
In the current election, however, the result might be so unfair that the electorate finally takes notice. Mathematical models based on recent opinion polls suggest that Labour could come third in the popular vote and still win the most seats (while the Liberal Democrats could win all the votes and still come last). If the most likely result, weighing other probabilities, is a slight win for the Conservatives, this may still produce a parliament with no over-all control: a “hung parliament” as it is brutally called (though the Liberal Democrats are trying to popularize the more jaunty term “balanced parliament”). If this happens, the Conservatives would try and form a “minority” government, hoping that the other parties would fail to snuggle-up close enough to vote against them. David Cameron could then choose his moment to re-run the election and get a proper majority. History suggests this works 50 percent of the time; the other half of times, the voters go for other guy. The Conservatives would, no doubt, calculate that if they could beat Gordon Brown once, they could do it again. But if the Labour Party replaced Gordon Brown, then the result might be just as close, again.
By tradition, elections run along a fear-change axis. The government argues the opposition cannot be trusted, while the challenger asks the voters to gamble on change. This election is different because all parties are standing for change, even the government. Of course, Gordon Brown must run on his record as Tony Blair’s finance minister. He is playing a poor hand well by arguing that only he can be trusted in the present poor economy. And, outside of economics, even he is offering change. In the lead-up to the election, Brown revealed an unsuspected enthusiasm for reform. For instance: the House of Lords. In every other country with a second chamber, like the US Senate, the representatives are elected. Only in the UK is this chamber a mix of appointees and aristocrats. Now Brown is offering a fully elected house. On electoral reform, he is promising a referendum on a new voting system. Why now, after 13 years? The assumption is that they are looking for schemes that will be attractive to Liberal Democrats, their likely partners in a hung parliament. Unless the Conservatives can win two elections in a run, Britain may see changes bigger than at any other time in the 303 years of its mother parliament.
Nicholas Blincoe is an author and screenwriter living between London and the West Bank city of Bethlehem. He writes regularly for the Guardian and Telegraph. He is also an advisor to Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.
