Musings on the UK election

A story that has intrigued me over the past week has been the outcome of the British election. It is striking the similar electoral situation in both Canada and Britain. The British election in many ways has mirrored Canada’s most recent election.

Both the Labour and the Liberal parties were mired in scandal and both electorates decided to split the vote leaving the conservative parties with the ability to form minority governments (the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives are currently working on a deal in the UK). It also appears that like the Liberal Party, the Labour Party will be catapulted into a leadership crisis, as it was announced today that Gordon Brown will be stepping down.

In my opinion, the major issue in both the UK and Canada is the lack of a viable left (not dissimilar to the situation in the United States). The Labour party is technically the most left wing of the three major parties, but New Labour has largely aligned itself with the ruling class, not just with its foreign policy (supporting the invasion of Iraq) but also with its domestic policy. The Labour government supported has largely supported “big business” and cut social programs. The Labour tenure has overseen an increase in the divide between the rich and the poor in Britain as according to Sunday Times the 1,000 richest have increased their fortunes by 30 per cent under Labour, the largest surge on record.

While both the Conservative’s and Liberal Democrats have criticized Labour’s stance on Iraq neither have made the war a major issue in their campaigns. The so-called alternative, the Liberal Democrats have a fairly moderate platform (more can be found about their platform here http://network.libdems.org.uk/manifesto2010/libdem_manifesto_2010.pdf) and the platforms of all three parties are not very different.

The current debate seems to be surrounding electoral reform, and this is the major issue the Liberal Democrats are pursuing in their role as “king maker”. I am all for proportional representation instead of the antiquated past-the-post system, but find it somewhat troubling that this is the only platform initiative that the Liberal Democrats are pushing the Tories on. The Tories have offered to support a referendum on the matter in exchange for Liberal Democratic support in forming a government. I predict there will be a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition formed in the next few days, and we will see few policy changes by this government.

I think the only solution to this problem is to vote for pop sensation Craig David as new Prime Minister as his solution is to freestyle political policies while cruising in his whip.