Uncertainty the only ‘certainty’ in UK poll
LONDON, April 6, (AFP): In one month, Britain votes in a general election likely to put the nail in the coffin of two party politics and herald an uncertain future of coalitions, alliances and horse-trading.
Neither of the two parties which have dominated parliament since the 1920s, the Conservatives and the Labour, is expected to win the 326 House of Commons seats out of 650 needed to govern alone.
They will likely have to team up with a smaller party or parties instead.
The prime minister after May 7 will be one of two men — the incumbent, Conservative leader David Cameron, who currently heads a coalition government, or his Labour counterpart Ed Miliband.
Those two points aside, the rest is about as murky as the River Thames.
“We are now in a de facto multi-party system,” said Simon Hix of the London School of Economics (LSE). “A third vote Conservative, a third vote Labour, a third vote somebody else.”
The BBC’s opinion poll tracker currently puts the centre-right Conservatives on 34 percent and centreleft Labour on 33 percent, followed by the anti-EU UKIP, junior coalition partners the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and a string of other parties.
As if that were not complicated enough, the election is also bringing into focus two important ways in which Britain’s identity could change in the coming decades.
Particularly
Nationalist parties, particularly the proindependence Scottish National Party (SNP), look set to make major gains, which could hasten the loosening and eventual break-up of the United Kingdom.
Support for the SNP has surged even though Scotland voted against independence in a referendum last year.
It is expected to win most of Scotland’s House of Commons seats in May and says it could be prepared to prop up a minority centre-left Labour government in return for key concessions.
“The UK is now evolving towards a quasi-federal country,” said the LSE’s Tony Travers.
He added that the SNP’s main aim “would not be to produce a stable government in the UK — it would be to have another referendum on Scottish independence”.
Then there is the possibility that Britain could end up leaving the European Union as a result of the election.
Cameron has promised to hold an in-out vote by 2017 if the centre-right Conservatives win outright on May 7.
While none of the main parties are making Europe a big issue in a campaign dominated by the economy and the future of the state-run National Health Service (NHS), polls suggest an EU referendum could be relatively close.
The latest YouGov poll in February found that support for membership was at an all-time high of 45 percent against 35 percent in favour of leaving.
Another consequence of the election is that some of the biggest names in British politics could lose their jobs.
Hix predicted that Cameron would resign as Conservative leader if the party loses the election, while Labour would force Miliband to do the same if he fails to get into Downing Street after five years of austerity.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, whose centrist Liberal Democrats are the coalition’s junior partners, has seen his party’s support slump to single figures in government and could lose his seat, according to the polls.
Fails
Nigel Farage of UKIP has said he will quit if he fails to win the House of Commons seat he is contesting.
But many Britons could be more interested in a totally different celebrity come May.
Kate, wife of heir to the throne Prince William, is due to give birth to the couple’s second baby in the second half of April, an event whose pageantry and razzmatazz threatens to eclipse anything on offer in the gloomy corridors of the parliament at Westminster.
With one month to go until Britain’s general election, experts are poring over opinion polls for clues about what will happen in the closest race in decades.
Though the ultimate outcome remains unknown, surveys do offer some idea on whether David Cameron may remain prime minister after May 7 voting. The polls have been consistent for months.
Cameron’s centre-right Conservatives, currently senior partners in a coalition government, and Ed Miliband’s centre-left opposition Labour are neck-and-neck. The BBC’s opinion poll tracker currently puts the Conservatives at 34 percent and Labour at 33 percent. This suggests neither party will be able to form a government alone.
The success of smaller parties is the story of the election so far.
The Conservatives and Labour have dominated British politics since the 1920s. But now the two-party system is fragmenting, which could mean the Conservatives or Labour may have to team up with a smaller party or parties to govern.
Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party (UKIP), which wants Britain to leave Europe, is polling at 15 percent while the Greens are on five percent. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP), which wants independence from Britain, looks set to replace Labour as the biggest party.
National percentage support does not decide the election.
While these figures offer a guideline of how each party is doing, the next government will be decided by how many seats in the House of Commons each party wins.
For election purposes, Britain is broken down into 650 local constituencies. To form a government, a party needs to win over half of these — at least 326.
Predicting how many seats each party will win is much harder than measuring percentage support.
The Guardian newspaper’s projection currently suggests that the Conservatives will win 276 seats and Labour 270. It gives the SNP 50, junior coalition partners the Liberal Democrats 28 — half their current figure — and UKIP four.