Safety first
British voters prefer Cameron’s familiarity to taking
a risk with an unknown:
Many British voters outside the prosperous south-east of England did
not feel the benefit amid low wages and fast rising house prices. They
remained skeptical about all parties’ promises - lower taxes, better
services, more housing - but opted, in what appears to have been a late
swing to the Tories, for the familiar ‘safety first’ option rather than
take a risk with Miliband.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has confounded pollsters and
pundits by winning a sensational second five-year term in office for his
Conservative party.
This time Cameron will be free from the constraints of coalition with
the centrist Liberal Democrats. The Lib Dems, Cameron’s partners in
office since 2010, were almost wiped out, and their leader, Deputy Prime
Minister Nick Clegg, resigned on Friday morning.
Cameron’s victory in Thursday’s general election obliterated
opposition leader Ed Miliband’s hopes of eking out a small win for
Labour. Miliband also resigned in the wake of the defeat.
But it came at the price for the Tories of stunning success for the
separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) north of the border.
Majority
With all 650 seats declared, the Conservatives had 331, Labour 232,
the SNP 56 and the Liberal Democrats eight. In practice 323 Members of
Parliament is the number needed to form a majority government.
As Cameron drove to Buckingham Palace to notify Queen Elizabeth II
that she had a new government from day one, rather than the chaotic
search for a viable cross-party coalition of either the right or the
left, Miliband resigned as Labour leader, shocked by the scale of his
rejection by the electorate. Among the night’s casualties were a raft of
senior Labour figures, including his shadow chancellor Ed Balls,
defeated in Leeds.
The result was a vindication of Cameron’s much-criticized decision to
run a largely negative campaign, stressing the risks to Britain’s
still-fragile economic recovery of a Labour government that would
overspend and drive away investors through taxes aimed at the wealthy
and their tax-avoiding practices.
But the prime minister’s victory was partly the product of a
relentless Conservative campaign to highlight the dangers of a Labour
minority government propped up by the left-leaning SNP in Scotland - and
this polarizes Britain in an unprecedented way. Critics have protested
that the outcome, a tactical success in England, could accelerate the
breakup of the United Kingdom.
It is a development which the US, EU and other allies, including
those in NATO, fear because it would weaken Britain’s international
standing and place a question over its Trident submarine nuclear defence
capability - currently based in the Holy Loch in Scotland.
Conservative
But financial markets responded strongly to news of a Conservative
win - which lifted the Labour threat of higher corporate and personal
taxes for the City of London, along with more stringent regulation.
The Scottish result may be the more significant overnight
development. The SNP, which lost a referendum to end the 308-year union
with England last September, won all but a handful of Scotland’s 59
seats, dozens of them from Labour in a region that was once a stronghold
for the party and opening the way to significant influence in Britain’s
650-seat Westminster parliament as Cameron’s Conservatives seek to
govern with a slender majority.
With his own key cabinet allies - including veteran business
secretary Vince Cable - also punished with defeat by voters, Deputy
Prime Minister Nick Clegg resigned as leader of his Liberal Democrat
party on Friday morning.
He was one of only a handful of his party’s 57 MPs to hang on to his
seat, in the northern industrial city of Sheffield.
Ukip, the rightwing populist party that favours British withdrawal
from the European Union, won 4 million votes but only a single seat, due
to the vagaries of Britain’s electoral system, built for two large
parties and now creaking under the weight of many smaller ones. Its
leader, Nigel Farage, long a member of the European parliament in
Strasbourg but desperate to gain a platform at Westminster, failed to
win his seat and resigned as party leader ... although he left open the
door for a return.
Disappointed
Equally disappointed were the leftwing Greens, with one million votes
under Britain’s winner-take-all voting system but just one seat to show
for it.
The five-week campaign had been marked by negative mud-slinging all
round, with Labour accusing Cameron of being an elitist, keen only to
protect the rich during the prolonged recession since 2008.
Cameron and his chancellor George Osborne could point to a recovery
which saw UK growth at 2.8% last year and two million new jobs created,
a better performance than that of the struggling eurozone across the
English Channel. But many British voters outside the prosperous
south-east of England did not feel the benefit amid low wages and fast
rising house prices. They remained skeptical about all parties’ promises
- lower taxes, better services, more housing - but opted, in what
appears to have been a late swing to the Tories, for the familiar
“safety first” option rather than take a risk with Miliband.
Clegg’s Liberal Democrats, who shocked many supporters by accepting
coalition office with the hated Conservatives in 2010, claimed they had
helped provide stable government after the banking crisis but paid the
price on Thursday. Voters defected back to Labour or to the Tories in
large numbers. Rather than split Cameron’s vote, some disaffected Tories
reneged on their threat to vote Ukip and stayed at home.
Candidate
Despite not being a candidate on Thursday - she sits in the regional
Scottish parliament - Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who
succeeded Alex Salmond after the 55% to 45% defeat for the independence
campaign in September, proved to be the election’s star performer.
In TV debates with a combination of up to six rival leaders she
emerged as fluent, confident and determined to put some leftwing fire
into a Miliband-led government if she had a veto.
That scenario impressed Labour-voting Scots who flocked to her banner
on Thursday and all but wiped out Labour in its northern heartland.
Among those falling was that held until last month by Gordon Brown,
Labour’s UK prime minister until 2010. What the SNP triumph means for
the long term is the largest question today’s result poses for Britain.
For now Labour is due to undergo another leadership contest and as
the focus turns to possible candidates questions are already being asked
about the willingness of David Miliband - whom younger brother Ed
defeated for the leadership in 2005 - to return to Britain and stand
again.
David Miliband is now in New York, where he runs the International
Rescue refugee charity.
At his Upper West Side apartment on Thursday night, a doorman said he
had left town for the weekend. “Was he expecting you?”
No, he was told; we’re reporters from the Guardian.
“I think that’s why he left,” the doorman said.
Additional reporting by Oliver Laughland in New York
- The Guardian |