The curious case of voting for no one

The gap between my writing this article and your reading it will be an interesting one. Right now, I am sitting in Belfast, watching the outworking of the 2010 British election as it swings from one potential outcome to another. By the time you read this article, however, the question of which poli- tical parties will be ruling the country will, more than likely, be resolved.

The 2010 election result in the UK, as everyone knows by now, produced a hung Parliament. This means that, of the 650 seats up for grabs, no single party managed to secure a majority of 326. The Conservative Party won 306, the Labour Party 258 and the Liberal Democrats 57. Faced with this scenario, either the Conservatives could have formed a minority government or at least two of the parties had to form a coalition to make an overall majority.

At the moment, that is while I write and not as you read, there is no coalition deal or minority government. The Liberal Democratic Party is locked in negotiations with the Conservative Party and the Labour Party.

The point I wish to make, however, does not concern my political soothsaying abilities (or lack thereof), or ultimately who gets into bed with whom, politically speaking, but rather concerns why Britain found itself in the curious predicament of a hung Parliament in the first place.

Clearly, no one really won the election. The coalition that is inevitably running the show as you read this article no doubt told the British electorate it has a mandate to govern, but the truth is this mandate exists only if the political parties in question work together. On one level, this is a ringing endorsement for consensus politics; on another, it points to the fact that the British public largely did not trust any one party to govern.

Given the recent history of British politics, this is not surprising. Tony Blair systematically undermined public confidence by driving home decisions that the majority did not support, such as the Iraq war. Gordon Brown was gifted the office of Prime Minister without an election, and dozens of MPs were shown to be systematically feathering their own nests during the expenses scandal. This has left many people in the country feeling profoundly distrustful of politicians, or, at the very least, the political parties they represent.

This distrust has even deeper historical roots. There obviously was a desire to do away with the Labour Party and Brown’s bumbling style of governance. But, equally, given the long shadow of Margaret Thatcher and the drastic impact her reign had on the poor in Britain, no one wanted to give the Conservatives an unfettered opportunity to dominate government either.

In Northern Ireland, the picture was similar. Although people continued to vote for the large parties like the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), at the same time, the people chose to decapitate some of the very same political parties. For example, the leader of the DUP, and First Minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson, who has been defend- ing himself over various financial and other scandals, lost his seat after holding it for three decades.

So, I do not know what the new coalition in the UK will look like, but I imagine it is in place by now. No single party will be able to legislate freely. Compromise will be the order of the day. This could prove to be the ‘third way’ Blair was always looking for or an unmitigated disaster as previous political enemies try to work together.

Either way, the people have spoken. The message is clear: if politicians want an unequivocal mandate, then they need to govern for the people and not for themselves. I wonder how long it will take for the South African electorate to figure that out.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 21 May 2010 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

Phoney Tony gets his knuckles rapped

Australian golfer Greg Norman is quoted as saying, “It’s not the victories that count to me. It’s the quality of how you deliver your losses and the quality of how you deliver your victories”. For Tony Blair, whose Labour Party won the May 2005 election in the UK, the quality of the victory was dismal. Granted, Blair won a historic third term and is the only UK prime minister since the war, with Margaret Thatcher, to have triumphed in three successive general elections. But his majority of 161 seats was cut dramatically to 67; less than half of what it was in the landslide victories of 1997 and 2001. More alarming for Blair is that his party now has the lowest share of the vote for a UK ruling party in modern times. Due to the “first past the post” electoral system, Labour holds 55% of the seats in parliament. However, it has only 35% of the share of the vote, with the Conservatives holding 32% and the Liberal Democrats 22%. So, although Blair won the election, the electorate has rapped his knuckles. Blair acknowledges that Iraq was ‘deeply divisive’, and commentators put it and the lack of trust in Blair generally at the core of the slump in the Labour vote. A recent Populus poll found that close to half of the public who claim to have once trusted Blair feel this has now been lost. It is no wonder that taunting names such as B-Liar and Phoney Tony have stuck in the public consciousness.

Meeting of the NATO-Russia Council
Paul Morse / Public domain

But will Blair go? No one really knows. There are strong calls for him to hand over to Gordon Brown, his most likely successor, sooner rather than later. Blair insists he will see out his term of office and is already trying to rush legislation through on controversial issues ranging from immigration control to identity cards. Blair is obviously a fighter, but he is also driven by concerns about his own legacy. This is partly what drove him into his fated relationship with George W Bush. I think he rather fancied the idea of waging a Churchillian-style global war and writing his name indelibly into the history books. His ambitions got the better of him.

For Africa, however, there may be a silver lining in Blair’s gradual demise. If I am correct and Blair worries not only about his current reputation but how history will write about him, he will have to do something spectacular before he leaves office to set the record straight. In that regard, he will have his eye keenly on his forthcoming role as chair of the G8. In a perverse way, coupled with growing pressure from campaigns such as Make Poverty History, perhaps he will choose the current context to make a move on African debt relief. Not only will this balance his blunders in Iraq and increase his international standing, at least in his mind, he will also steal the thunder from Brown, who has championed the Africa debt issue. So, as Blair scrambles to save his tarnished image, now is the time for antidebt campaigners to turn up the heat. Who knows, for some of the wrong reasons (and hopefully some right ones too), maybe Blair is ready to agree to sweeping debt relief following the G8 Summit in July. Like Blair’s election, the quality of such a victory may not be entirely satisfying for antidebt campaigners, but this will be of little concern if its impact makes a real difference in Africa.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 27 May 2005 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.