Analysis: UK faces election with a difference

[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذه الصورة]
UK PM
Gordon Brown (left) and Conservative leader David Cameron at the state
opening of parliament, London, November 2009

The worst kept secret in British politics is now officially confirmed
and the UK will go to the polls for a general election on May 6 to
elect 650 members of the House of Commons. It will be a far
closer contest than many had expected a year ago. Then a huge lead for
the Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, made it look a racing
certainty that the Tories, as they are known, would be heading back to [ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]
for the first time since 1997. The depths of the recession, the
unpopularity of [ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]'s
rather dour Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the parliamentary expenses
scandals -- which the public seemed to blame more on the ruling Labour
Party, although all were tainted -- had led to widespread predictions of
a Conservative landslide. But over the past few months the
opinion poll gap has closed. As an election approaches people think less
"Do I like the present government?" and more "Who do I trust to run the
country for the next five years?" as they answer pollsters' questions

Some Conservative policies unraveled swiftly on public presentation
and, with unemployment and public debt decreasing faster than expected,
the possibility of a "hung Parliament" (in which no party holds an
overall majority) has been much talked about. What many had
forgotten was the extent of the electoral mountain the Conservatives
have to climb in order to wrest power from Brown's Labour Party. To gain
an overall majority of just one in parliament they have to gain an
extra 117 constituency seats, a feat which no party has achieved since
the 1930s. (At the last election Labour won 355 seats, the Conservatives
198 and the Liberal Democrats 62.) The Conservatives tend to
build up huge majorities in seats they win but do not spread their votes
so well across the country. As a result they could score five points
higher than Labour in terms of their share of the national vote and yet
still see Labour returned with the biggest number of seats in
parliament. At the last general election in 2005, Labour had
only a 36 per cent share of the vote nationwide but took 57 per cent of
the seats in parliament. A narrowed gap in opinion polls over the
previous two months showed the Conservatives with 37 per cent of the
vote and Labour with 32 per cent (although Tory tax cut promises seem to
be widening the gap again as the poll date approaches). An election
result with those figures could still give Labour 294 seats to 277 for
the Conservatives. Such a result could bring into play the third
party in British politics, the Liberal Democrats, led by Nick Clegg and
including the respected economic spokesman Vince Cable. The system hits
them particularly hard: the Lib Dems scored 23 per cent of the vote at
the last election and got only 10 per cent of the seats.

What
would be the impact of a hung parliament on the UK? [ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]
Either of the major parties might need the Lib Dems' support to
govern. But that puts Clegg in an unenviable position. If his party were
to help Brown to cling to office after an apparent rejection by an
electorate no longer prepared to vote Labour in with a governing
majority then he would get little thanks.But with the Lib Dems as the most pro-European party in British
politics it is virtually impossible for him also to support a
Conservative administration which will be the most virulently
Euroskeptic in British political history. (The Conservative Party has
turned its back on the center-right mainstream in Europe -- the European
Peoples Party backed by Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany and
President Nicolas Sarkozy in France -- and allied with a small group of
maverick right-wingers from Poland and the Czech Republic). Clegg
has said that the British people, not his party, will be the
kingmakers, insisting: "Whichever party has the strongest mandate from
the British people it seems to me they have the first right to try and
govern". But he has not said whether he means the party with the biggest
share of the vote or the party with the biggest number of seats. The
Liberal Democrats will be fighting to win seats off Labour in the north
of England and seeking to defend their own seats from the Conservatives
in the south-west. As so often, the key issues in the election
will center on the economy. [ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]
was chancellor of the exchequer (chief finance minister) for 10 years
before he succeeded Tony Blair as party leader and prime minister. The
Tories are assailing his record as chancellor and blaming him for the
recession. But some voters are nervous of entrusting the conduct of the
economy to the comparatively youthful [ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]
and his shadow chancellor, the 38-year-old George Osborne.