There is only one way that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will retain his office, and that is by winning an outright majority in the House of Commons in the British general election to be held May 6. According to the opinion polls, that isn’t going to happen. And over the week-end, the Liberal Democrats’ leader Nick Clegg made it clear that Labour is going to have to find itself a new leader if it wants the support of his party.
The British electoral system is first-past-the-post, which means whoever gets the most votes in a constituency wins the seat – note that "most" doesn’t mean majority. In a two-party fight, the point is moot, but in a three- four- or more-way race, it matters a great deal. And because the Conservative vote tends to concentrate heavily in rural and well-off areas, they run up huge majorities that don’t do them much good. Meanwhile, the LibDems’ vote is often so spread out that they get nothing for pretty solid support. Indeed, most electoral models now show Labour coming in third in the popular vote and winning the largest number of seats in Parliament. This is even more unfair than the way lawn tennis is scored.
Mr. Clegg took the bull by the horns on BBC1’s Andrew Marr program yesterday (one of the talking heads shows over there) where he stated, "There are now indications Labour might come third in terms of people voting for the different parties. It is just preposterous, the idea that if a party comes third in terms of the number of votes it still somehow has the right to carry on squatting in No. 10 [Number 10 Downing Street, London SW1 is the PM’s official residence] and continue to lay claim to having the prime minister."
Mr. Clegg also said, "I think electoral reform is a first step which any government of whatever composition will need to introduce to start restoring public trust in the system. I don't think after this election it will ever be possible to put the genie back in the bottle. Electoral reform is an absolute pre-condition for renewal in this country."
As Monday wore on, he backpedaled a little about dealing with Labour, "I don’t care where they come from. It could be a man from the moon. All I care about is we bring that greater fairness and that greater democracy and that political reform." He didn't seem to backpedal on backing Mr. Brown, though.
Labour has begun to panic a bit over this scenario. They know how it will look to form a government having finished third in popular votes. So, Home Secretary Alan Johnson (whose job is sort of a mix of America’s Department of Justice, Interior, Homeland Security and bits and pieces of other departments – or as Joe Biden would say, it’s a Big F*cking Deal) threw an olive branch at the LibDems by saying, "Because I am a supporter of proportional representation and have been for a long time, I obviously don’t have this horrified approach to how a more balanced parliament would work."
This distinguishes him from Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, who remarked "coalition politics is not the way of doing government." Another possible candidate to succeed Mr. Brown, Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the right-wing Telegraph (an arch-Tory pal of mine calls it the Feudal Times and Reactionary Herald) "We have chosen our leader. We have got a strong leader and we have got a programme for the future. We are not having Nick Clegg choosing the leader of the Labour Party, thank you very much." Mr. Miliband is a good and loyal man in public, and no doubt in private as well, yet in this morning’s Independent Nigel Morris reported, "Last night a Miliband ally said: ‘There are a lot of discussions going on about David's future chances’."
In yesterday’s Sunday Times (London’s), we read:
Yesterday [Saturday] there was mounting evidence that senior Labour figures are ready to force Brown to quit immediately after the election in the hope of securing a pact with the Lib Dems.
One pointed to an obscure clause in Labour’s rulebook which states that if the sitting prime minister becomes ‘permanently unavailable’ for any reason, the cabinet has the power to appoint a temporary successor. This ‘interim prime minister’ could lead for several weeks until a permanent replacement is elected by the party. Alan Johnson, the home secretary, is regarded as the favourite for this post, although Harriet Harman, the deputy leader, would also be keen to assume the role.
Prime Minister Brown has one more shot at saving his own political skin, as I see it. Thursday night’s debate is on the BBC and will cover the economy. He used to be Chancellor of the Exchequer (sort of a Treasury Secretary and Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and a few other economic jobs thrown in). He’s a fount of statistics and made UK economic policy from 1997 to 2007. By contrast, David Cameron of the Tories and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats are economic light weights. Gordo has to knock the ball out of the park, and then hope the other two squabble all evening.
Right now, I think he should consider ways in which he can serve his country outside of politics.
The third and final debate is Thursday, April 29, at 8:30 pm British Summer Time (7:30 pm GMT, 3:30 pm Easter, 2:30 Central, 1:30 Mountain, and 12:30 for those on the eastern shore of the Pacific Ocean). You can catch in on BBC1 in the UK, and I am pretty sure the Beeb’s website will have it too http://news.bbc.co.uk