And The British Choose -- No One !

The result of the elections in Great Britain were very interesting. As a progressive, I was pulling for the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, and frankly, I think the election worked out for British progressives about as well as could be expected. In essence, the British chose to give no party a majority and there will have to be some kind of arrangement between two or more parties to share power.

This outcome was not unexpected. The Labour Party abandoned its progressive roots when it chose Tony Blair as its leader. Blair abandoned the party's principles and tried to rule as some kind of business-oriented middle-of-the-roader. Then he made things even worse by becoming George Bush's lapdog and getting Great Britain into two costly and unnecessary wars. His successor, Gordon Brown, was not a great politician or political thinker and could not make up for Blair's transgressions.

It was obvious that the country was not happy with the Labour Party's direction, and just as obvious that Labour had really lost its direction. But what was the alternative? The country had not forgotten the poor leadership the Conservatives had given them in the past, and the new Conservative leader, David Cameron, offered nothing but the same old tired Conservative cliches. It's no wonder that the country failed to give either party a clear majority.

Election night did have a couple of surprises -- one pleasant and the other disappointing. The pleasant surprise was the election of a Green Party member to Parliament for the first time in the country's history. Caroline Lucas (pictured) won the election in the constituency of Brighton Pavilion. At last the Greens have a voice in Parliament, and she seems to be a very capable and intelligent person.

The disappointing surprise was the poor showing by the Liberal Democrats. The polls had shown them to be doing very well, and they had hopes of perhaps getting as many as 100 members of Parliament. But the bottom fell out on election night, and they actually wound up losing a few seats. They still will probably wind up as kingmakers, because neither of the top two parties could govern without their support, but they have to be disappointed.

Now one of the two major parties will have to negotiate forming a government with the Liberal Democrats. It looks like this will be the Conservatives, who have the most seats in the new Parliament (but are twenty seats short of a majority). At this point, I hope it is the Conservatives who form the new government. It will no doubt be a weak government and the Liberal Democrats should be able to prevent them from doing too much damage to the country before the next election.

And that next election may only be a couple of years away. I can't see the right/left alliance the Conservatives will have lasting much longer than that. Hopefully, that will give the Labour Party enough time to right their ship, rediscover their progressive roots and rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of the public (and find a leader more appealing than Gordon Brown).

Here are the election results showing party, votes, percentage and seats in Parliament:

Conservative (10,706,647) 36.1% - 306 seats

Labour (8,604,358) 29.0% - 258 seats

Liberal Democrat (6,827,938) 23.0% - 57 seats

Democratic Unionist (168,216) 0.6% - 8 seats

Scottish National (491,386) 1.7% - 6 seats

Sinn Fein (171,942) 0.6% - 5 seats

Plaid Cymru (165,394) 0.6% - 3 seats

Social Democratic & Labour (110,970) 0.4% - 3 seats

Green (285,616) 1.0% - 1 seat

Alliance (42,762) 0.1% - 1 seat

Independents (319,891) 1.1% - 1 seat

Ten other parties got vote totals ranging from 3,157 to 917,832, but none of them were able to win a seat in Parliament. For all practical purposes, that makes them irrelevant -- at least until the next election. They will have no voice in the new government.