A British Election Post-Mortem

By Steve Hynd

Watching the BBC's coverage of the UK's election results last night and reading what British pundits were tweeting, there seemed to be a lot of head scratching going on. We'd gotten the result we expected -a hung parliament - but seemingly for obscure reasons.

That we were expecting such a result is in itself remarkable, given that six months or a year ago the safe money was on a Conservative Party win, maybe even a landslide. But then came some Labour bounceback as Brown proved he was always a better Chancellor than PM and, of course, "Cleggmania". The Liberal Democrat leader proved more charismatic than Broon and less toffee-nosed smarmy than Cameron in the debates, fuelling speculation among many that the Lib-Dems might finally break through and be more than the "other party".

That didn't happen. The LibDem vote was up less than 1%. And while there was an overall national swing to the Tories of 4%, that swing was an average rather than a trend.

What I mean by that is that Labour actually did very well in some areas, such a London and Scotland, taking votes from minor parties and even from the Conservatives. In other areas, the Lib-Dems got a big swing. In many, the Tories got their swing but not as much as they'd hoped. It all left right-leaning magazine The Spectator's political commentator Alex Massie writing on Twitter:

Hey, Britain, I'm supposed to file a "What Happened?" piece in 30 minutes. So thanks for not making that clear.

So, for what it's worth, here's what I think happened. With the benefit of Hynd-sight (sorry), the 2010 election was always going to be about two polarizing currents in British politics: the legacy of Blair/Brown vs the legacy of Thatcher/Major. Both ruled too long and both screwed over large sections of the populace more than they had any right to. But with tough economic times everywhere, not just in the UK, people went for what they knew, what was psychologically "safe". England outside the very big cities has always been more conservative and right-leaning than not and they voted for the Tories. In Scotland and the inner cities, they returned to the bosom of the party they've always backed in tough times and voted Labour. The Lib-Dems couldn't overcome that decades-long inertia of voting habits.

So now Cameron is trying to entice the Lib-Dems into a coalition, as is Brown. The third wheel of UK politics got 45 seats, but would have had more like 160 under a system of proportional representation and Clegg has decided to talk first to the one least likely to give him what he wants - a referendum on electoral reform.

However, for the moment I'm inclined to go along with Peter Riddell in The Times:

Any government formed in the next few days will not be able to command a stable or overall majority in the Commons. So the new Parliament is unlikely to last more than a year or so. A second general election is probable either later this year or in the spring of 2011.

Everything else is uncertain.

And if Cameron manages to form a government now he might well find himself at a disadvantage then.