The election took place on 6th May, but it's only now, almost a week later that we have a good understanding of what shape the UK government will take for the forseeable future.
In the final days of the campaign, opinion polls suggested a reasonably close three-way split, with the Conservatives in front, followed by New Labour and then the Liberal Democrats, the latter predicted to make big gains.
But, on election night before any of the votes were offically counted, the exit poll correctly revealed the result as being somewhat different. The Conservatives had indeed won the largest number of seats, with Labour in second, but the Liberal Democrat vote had very surprisingly returned a lower number of seats than before. No party had obtained an overall majority.
The unfairness of the "First Past the Post" voting system can be seen in the result, as follows:
| Party | Seats Won | Share of Vote |
|---|---|---|
| Conservatives | 306 | 36.1% |
| New Labour | 258 | 29% |
| Liberal Democrats | 57 | 23% |
| Others | 28 | 11.9% |
As the figure needed for a majority stands at 326, the Conservatives were just too far off for a minority government to be considered a good option. And the arithmetic didn't favour a Labour-Liberal coalition either. A coalition of those, seen as a real possibility in the run-up, would need support from regional (Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish) parties to succeed.
With the Liberal Democrats holding the balance of power, Nick Clegg chose not to follow constitutional convention and allow the sitting prime-minister, Gordon Brown to attempt to form a government. Instead he declared that the Conservatives should try first and entered into talks with them. But again by convention, it was necessary for Brown to remain as PM until a final deal could be struck.
Thus began three days of uncertainty as discussions occured out of sight from the electorate regarding the matter of who would govern them. Commentators and the political classes anxiously watched the financial markets, aiming to ensure that the level of uncertainty that existed would not lead to an attack by speculators on the currency or the nations debt.
Things took a turn on Monday 10th when it was revealed that the Liberals had secretely also been talking to Labour, and announced formal discussions with them. Gordon Brown, seen as an impediment to a deal, announced that he would soon step aside to facilitate it.
And then the Tory press went beserk. David Cameron, whose party did not win a majority even under the slanted voting system had been "robbed of victory", said The Sun, also declaring that Britain was now on "the brink of dictatorship". The Daily Telegraph described the Labour/LibDem talks as an attempt at a "coup" to nullify the election result. Richard Littlejohn of the Mail used similar language and added that it would have been little different had Brown "ordered the tanks to roll down Whitehall and train their guns on the meeting of the Parliamentary Conservative party". Rupert Murdoch's Sky News abandoned its thin veneer of impartiality, as Adam Boulton angrily turned on Alistair Campbell and Kay Burley bullied a dissenter calling for electoral reform.
(See the amusing follow-up here.)
For their part, Labour put forward a team of negotiators consisting of Brown, PR man Alistair Campbell and Lords Adonis and Mandelson, not bothering to consult their parliamentary party, indicating just how seriously they took the concept of democracy.
However, with the reaction of the media, and importantly the financial vultures (the pound dropped by 1p against the dollar inside an hour), other senior New Labour figures soon moved to distance themselves and any chance of a deal, described as a potential "progressive coalition" was scuppered. It remains to be seen if the LibDems had any intention of pursuing this course other than as a means to extract concessions from the Tories - which they successfully did, gaining a promise of a referendum on the voting system.
After this, events took on an air of inevitability. Brown resigned as Prime Minister, was replaced by David Cameron and both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats recieved official consent from their parties to enter into a formal coalition.
The deal arrived at contains some give and take in both directions. A referendum will be held to ask if the voting system should be changed to the Alternative Vote, only a minor improvement on the current FPTP, and a long way from proportional representation (PR), which the LibDems wanted and which the Tories had most to lose from. The nuclear weapons system, Trident, will be retained. The LibDem manision tax will be scrapped, as will the Tory inheritance tax cut.
There will be some changes to the tax system to reflect LibDem ideas, but the harsh Tory immigration plan remain.
Most importantly, the new government will begin immediately to make enormous cuts to public spending, by an amount that was estimated before the election to be six times higher than anything that had been detailed by any party. This will be much larger in scale than any of the Thatcher cuts in the 1980s and it is impossible to foresee their implementation without social unrest on a significant scale.
In aligning themselves with the Tories on this in exchange for modest reforms elsewhere, the Liberal Democrats have blunted any chance that opposition to these cuts will be able to find a political voice. Following the closed-door negotiations, media hysteria and subservience to the money markets, it is difficult to view the post-election process as having been anything but a stitch-up by the main three UK parties, all determined to ensure that their common agenda to cut living standards to appease the financial aristocracy can proceed without a hitch.
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