Federal Judiciary

Oh, to Be a Righty in Old Blighty -- By: Iain Murray

The announcement of the general election in Britain comes at a time when more and more Americans, and especially conservatives, are getting their news from British sources, because of the inadequacy of the U.S. mainstream media. They are likely, therefore, to be more interested in this British election than any previous one. However, many parts of the British electoral system will either be alien or incomprehensible to an American voter. This handy guide attempts to give you the main points to remember.

(1) It?s a parliamentary system. The first thing to remember is that separation of powers between legislature and executive has ceased to exist in any meaningful sense in the British system. The election is for the legislature -- the House of Commons, in Parliament -- but whichever party gains a majority in the House of Commons then forms the executive, Her Majesty?s Government. The leader of the majority party becomes prime minister and appoints about 100 other ministers, about 22 of them at cabinet level, who run government departments. (Some of those ministers sit in the House of Lords, but let?s ignore that for now.) It is theoretically possible for a party to be elected to government with its leader being defeated in his district (called a constituency), but that hasn?t happened recently, if ever. If it did happen, the party would select a new leader to be prime minister.

(2) It?s a three-party system. Another important point to remember is that there are three mainstream parties, all of which sound to Americans as if they stand for something other than what they really stand for. The current government is the Labour party, led by Gordon Brown. Until the mid-1990s, Labour was unabashedly socialist, believing primarily in the redistribution of wealth. When he became Labour leader, Tony Blair moved his party sharply to the center. Some of its ultra-left-wing members defected, especially after the Iraq War, but for the most part ?New Labour? retained the tribal loyalty of the base. The present Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown, has moved the party back leftward (especially on financial issues), advocating high public spending and a strong regulatory state.

The Conservative party, currently led by David Cameron, has also gone through some changes. Cameron has led the party toward the center, and embraced green politics and minority rights. To an American conservative, the Conservative party will probably look like a Republican branch in New England, except less solid in its expression of core principles. There are some conservative stars of the future to watch for: Michael Gove, the party?s education spokesman and a deep thinker of considerable wit, is one who will be recognizably conservative to an American. Liam Fox, the Conservative defense leader, is considered rock-solid in American security circles, and Jeremy Hunt, the culture spokesman, has been advancing policies that could break the Left?s hold on British broadcast media, exemplified by the monolith that is the BBC. Daniel Hannan, a Tory member of the European Parliament, is sadly not standing in this election, but his close colleague and political soulmate Douglas Carswell is.

The third party is the Liberal Democrats, who on occasion act like liberal Democrats, and at other times act like libertarians. Their inability to decide whether they are a party of the statist Left or the free-market Right results in their being thought of as woolly centrists, when, in truth, they have very few centrist policies. This schizophrenia is the result of their being a hybrid party. Once known as the Social Democrat-Liberal Alliance, they are made up of (a) former Labour-party supporters who left the party at its most left-wing ebb in the 1980s and (b) the rump of the once-mighty Liberal party, which championed free trade, free markets, and social liberalism in the 19th century. Their current leader, Nick Clegg, has championed market liberalization within the European Union, but has been unable to put this distinctively liberal stamp on his party.

There are other minor parties, including the Nationalists, who champion independence for Scotland and Wales, and the far-left Respect party, whose sole MP is the buffoonish Saddam Hussein admirer George Galloway, who represents an Islamic enclave in East London. The United Kingdom Independence Party, a libertarian-conservative party that runs strong in the European elections, is unlikely to be a force; but its leader, Nigel Farage, is involved in the most entertaining sideshow of the elections, as he is standing against the sitting speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, whose reelection is normally unopposed by the main parties. Bercow, a former radical right-winger, was, until his election as speaker, regarded as one of the most left-wing members on the Conservative benches. He is unpopular among Tories, which gives Farage a chance to unseat him. Finally, there are significant numbers of MPs from Northern Ireland, which has separate parties shaped by the unique circumstances of Ulster. They are likely to become important in the event of a hung Parliament (about which more later).

These parties will soon produce manifestos, which are much more important versions of party platforms. A manifesto is like a stronger version of the ?Contract with America,? making solemn promises to the voters about what a party will do when it is elected. Indeed, a party manifesto is so important that there are constitutional provisions attached to its content; the House of Lords, for instance, cannot block a manifesto commitment. Famous examples include Margaret Thatcher?s 1979 manifesto and the Labour party manifesto of 1983 (the latter of which was dubbed the ?longest suicide note in history,? so unpalatable were its contents to the electorate). The 2010 manifestos have not yet been released, but this is a helpful site to guide you through what each party stands for. Labour is likely to campaign on a platform of ?national renewal,? although quite what that means has yet to be explained, and rather raises the question of just why Britain needs to be renewed after 13 years of Labour rule.

The Conservatives are promising to bring the voice of ?the great ignored? to Westminster. David Cameron launched his campaign by saying, ?We?re fighting this election for the great ignored. Young, old, rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight. They start businesses, operate factories, teach our children, clean the streets, grow our food, and keep us healthy -- keep us safe. They work hard, pay their taxes, obey the law. They?re good, decent people -- they?re the people of Britain, and they just want a reason to believe that anything is still possible in our country. This election is about giving them that reason, giving them that hope.? The focus of the manifesto is likely to be opportunity with a caring face.

(3) Hang on, what happened to the party of Thatcher? At this point, American conservatives might be wondering what became of the steeliness and forthrightness of the party of Margaret Thatcher. Unfortunately, while Mrs. T won the political war, she lost the war of ideas. The Conservatives? vital market reforms may have rescued Britain from disaster and helped win the Cold War, but they were regarded as immoral, selfish, and (amazingly) un-British by the electorate after 1992. While ministers were laying out the unarguable economic case for market reform, they failed to make the moral case for economic conservatism. Professors, bishops, TV intellectuals, and others conversely attacked the moral basis of capitalism unceasingly throughout the 1980s and 1990s. When a succession of Tory ministers were revealed as corrupt, sleazy, or adulterous (or all three), the image of the Tories as immoral and selfish was fixed in the public?s mind. Three successive landslide defeats followed.

When David Cameron was elected leader, he was given the job with the express purpose of changing the party?s image. He did so by taking up a variety of causes -- including the environment and minority rights -- that were unquestionably regarded by the public as a good thing. Many conservative commentators, such as the excellent Tim Montgomerie, point out that these policies are not at the center of Conservative-party thinking any more, but there is a further point to bear in mind: British Conservatism is a hybrid beast. Traditional conservatism -- or Toryism, to identify it more properly -- was explicitly paternalistic, tied to maintaining the authority of the class system, the established church, and other traditional institutions. In the late 19th century, a second strand was added, that of Liberal Unionism, which introduced free-market philosophy and what Americans would recognize as economic conservatism. Margaret Thatcher and her successors came from that Liberal Unionist tradition. David Cameron and his right-hand man, George Osborne, both unmistakably upper-class and of ?good breeding,? come from the Tory tradition. They are therefore much more likely to turn to paternalist solutions and see a role for government in solving problems. On the other hand, with Britain in a massive financial hole, economic conservatism may provide the only plausible way out. As Montgomerie notes, recent Conservative fortunes have been raised by a pledge to stop Labour?s ?tax on jobs.? If ever there were a time to restate the moral basis for a low-taxation, low-spending state, this may be it.

(4) Party political broadcasts. To return to the unusual features of a British election, ?party political broadcasts? (PPBs) take the place of TV ads. Campaign spending is severely restricted, but all parties standing in more than a certain number of seats are guaranteed primetime TV exposure on the broadcast networks. These PPBs are five to ten minutes long and can be extremely effective in getting a message to the public. (Examples from the last European election campaign can be found here.) Otherwise, party advertising is mostly restricted to billboard posters, some of which have been justly famous, and others problematic.

(5) Leaders debate for the first time. One thing that will look familiar to Americans is leadership debates. However, this will be a new thing to most British voters, as they have never happened before. Former Tory leader William Hague floated the debate idea in 2000, when he trailed Tony Blair by a wide margin in the polls. Hague, a brilliant debater, saw debates as an opportunity to close the gap. But Blair rejected the idea then, and again in 2005. With the polling numbers flipped, however, Gordon Brown now sees an opportunity. First, Brown is regarded by the public, in the words of one observer, as ?a Scotsman with a grievance,? and anything that will make him come across as more human is likely to benefit him. Furthermore, if Nick Clegg participates and puts in a good performance, there is a chance that David Cameron might lose the ?anti-Labour? vote to him. The debates are Cameron?s to lose; it is to his advantage that he always tends to perform well when the stakes are highest.

The results of the debates are likely to be reflected in the polls, which have to be read carefully. Because of the three-party system, you can?t just see who is in the lead and assume they are going to win the election. First, there is something called tactical voting, which has been an important feature in the past three elections. For almost 20 years, supporters of Labour and the Liberal Democrats have preferred a member of the other party to a Conservative; so in seats where Labour has been the main challenger to the Conservatives, Liberal Democrat supporters have voted for the Labour candidate, and vice versa. Thus, the generic ballot numbers do not reflect what will happen on polling day. Second, thanks to the vagaries of the electoral system (explained well here), the Conservatives need a lead of around 10 percentage points over Labour in order to guarantee a parliamentary majority. The Conservatives have been putting a lot of effort into swing districts in order to try to overcome these factors, but there is no real methodology for determining whether or not those efforts have paid off until polling day. There have been problems with polls in the past, most notably in 1992, when the polls predicted a comfortable Labour win but the Conservatives managed to secure a small but working majority. With some tension between pollsters over methodology, there is a possibility that we might not know the likely result from the polls.

Speaking of polling day, election night is a great tradition and spectacle. All the votes -- made by a simple pencil mark on paper -- are brought to a central locale in the constituency and counted by hand. Recounts are done by hand until all candidates? agents are satisfied an accurate result has been obtained. The candidates then all line up, and the returning officer reads out the results and certifies them, with the candidates then making speeches, some of which can become quite emotional. The fast and furious nature of the results leads to great broadcasting and extreme tension, especially if the polls are confounded, as they were in 1992. For some peculiar reason, there was a threat this year that many constituencies would not count on election night, but rather wait until Friday, May 7. This threat appears to have been averted for the main part, thanks to a campaign led by bloggers Iain Dale and Jonathan Isaby. While C-SPAN is likely to carry a feed from the BBC, those without access to a TV might want to follow LBC?s radio coverage.

Once the results are in, forming a government is the next step. Normally, this is simply a matter of having the leader of the party with a parliamentary majority get his team together and tell Her Majesty the Queen that this is her government. However, it is possible that no single party will achieve a majority. In that case, the leaders of the biggest parties will have the opportunity to form a government by bringing in other parties in coalition. This is where the Northern Irish parties may have a say. If a party is just a few seats shy, their natural allies in Northern Ireland might be willing to be part of the government for a few minor concessions. A coalition with a bigger party, such as the Liberal Democrats, is likely to come with much bigger demands, such as constitutional reform. If these coalition attempts fail, then a minority government is possible.

Such governments are inherently unstable and unlikely to govern effectively. The last minority government emerged after the election of February 1974, when the Tories won 297 seats, Labour 301, and the Liberals just 14 (they currently have over 50). The Tories attempted to form a coalition with Ulster Unionists and the Liberals, but were unable to reach a deal. Labour then formed a minority government, which was unable to do anything. It called a new general election in October, where it won a three-seat majority.

If I were asked to bet on the result in 2010, I would put my money on a small but workable Conservative majority. Such a result, however, would be a historic turnaround. Cooler heads might prefer to a bet on a hung parliament. That would be a disaster for Britain, which needs strong leadership to dig itself out of its current hole.

-- Iain Murray is vice president for strategy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on April 14, 2010 (boomark / email).