The impossible made possible

Last Thursday, the Conservatives Party succeeded in doing what no one predicted: to win a majority of 12 seats in the United Kingdom general election. This result was very surprising for all those who were following these elections. This time around, I ha

The CPA main focus is parliamentary diplomacy, the promotion of good parliamentary practice and the advance of parliamentary democracy. Working closely with the United Kingdom Electoral Commission, the CPA selected six Westminster parliamentary constituencies across the country to assess the UK’s election practices and procedures.

UK’s electoral system

The UK has a multi-party political system with a first-past-thepost electoral system used for General Elections to the House of Commons. This means that an MP is elected from an individual constituency when he receives more votes than any other candidate in the same constituency but not an absolute majority is needed. The UK is divided into 650 parliamentary constituencies: England has 533, Scotland 59, Wales 40 and Northern Ireland 12. The Conservative Party dominated the British political scene for 18 years from 1979 to 1997 with successive governments that pursued programmes of economic liberalism, adopting a free market approach to public services. The Labour Party swept into power with a landslide majority in the 1997 General Elections and carried out a wide range of progressive social reforms.

Coalition government

The 2010 General Election result led to a hung Parliament with no party winning an overall majority. Following several days of negotiations, the Conservatives formed a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. This coalition government was badly affected by the ongoing financial crises, apart from the fact that it tried to reduce the country’s deficit through austerity measures. Moreover, this coalition government introduced various changes to the immigration pol- icy, welfare policy, health care and education.

CPA – UK Observation Missions

As already mentioned above, the CPA selected six Westminster parliamentary constituencies across the country to observe and make recommendations to the electoral commission. The six constituencies were chosen so that the CPA could assess the UK’s electoral procedures and processes within a broad geographic and political spread. I was assigned the constituency of Wirral West, a constituency that was considered a bellwether constituency.

As part of the observation mission, we met various stakeholders, among whom election candidates, unions, youth forums, pressure groups and, last but not least, electoral officials. One of the main issues was that during the 2010 general elections, there was a substantial decline in electoral turnout of youths and females. Consequently, one of our tasks was to identify the main reasons for such a decline. On the other hand, we had to check if this issue was tackled by the political parties in their constituency in order to increase the turnout of both youths and women on Election Day. We also scrutinized the method of campaigning of all political parties involved in the General Election in Wirral West. The observation mission also included attending sessions of postal vote opening.

On the day of the election, the whole process from the opening to the closing of the polling stations, including the counting sessions, were closely monitored by the CPA observation missions. Consequently, following a press conference held in Westminster outlining the initial findings of the observation mission, a detailed report will be drawn up in the coming days which will be presented to the Electoral Commission for its consideration.

Election campaign

The 2015 General Election campaign has been hotly contested with the possibility of another coalition government. The Labour presented itself as the party of financial responsibility while the Conservatives projected themselves as the party of the working people. According to the polls, and right up to Election Day, it seemed that it was going to be a neck-to-neck contest between the two major parties. For all political camps, the best and by far the most effective campaigning method was the door-to-door canvassing.

The Tories did it again

About 15 minutes after the closure of the polling stations, the first exit polls were published. These indicated a landslide victory for the Conservatives, something that no one had predicted and thought it would ever happen. Everyone was convinced that a coalition government was a must: but that did not happen. The Conservatives won the election by a 12 seat majority. The shy ‘Tories’ did it once again: in the polls, Conservative voters did not say that they would vote for the Conservatives, but would show up on Election Day.

Another plausible reason for this landslide victory for the Conservatives is that the Scottish National Party (SNP) won 56 seats out of the 59 seats in Scotland, a traditional stronghold for the Labour Party. But it is pretty obvious that this time round the SNP had won over the Scottish voters. One must keep in mind that this raises some serious constitutional problems in the United Kingdom and may lead to another referendum on whether Scotland will get independence from the UK. This issue will be one of the main top- ics that will be debated in the coming days: will David Cameron be the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; will Nicola Sturgeon become the first Prime Minister of an independent Scotland? Another achievement of the SNP is that they succeeded in attracting the young voters. It is also worth mentioning that the SNP have the youngest MP since the 19th century, Mhaire Black, who is only 20 years old. But the question remains: what influence can the SNP have on Westminster?

This year’s turnout of voters was the highest since 1997, when Blair won the General Election for the Labour Party. But if Labour ever wants to hold a government in the future, he needs the seats in Scotland back: a somehow difficult achievement. Ed Miliband had to quit his job as Labour leader. Although during the election campaign he seemed to deliver, his message didn’t. It took him five years as a leader, six weeks campaigning but only one night to be demolished.

On the other hand, another leader that saw his downfall in this election is Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, also known as the Lib Dems. People lost their trust in the Lib Dems and their leader mainly because they joined forces with the Conservatives following the 2010 elections. Consequently, their pledges were not delivered.

On a final note, as things turned out, the present ‘first-past-the-post’ system currently used to be elected to the House of Commons leaves much to be desired. We have a situation where the SNP won 56 seats with 1.5 million votes but the UKIP obtained only one seat with nearly four million votes. In order to safeguard democracy in the electoral processes, concrete steps should be undertaken for this ambiguity to be rectified.