British Prime Minister David Cameron
For over a hundred years, British politics has largely functioned as a three-party system consisting of the Conservative Party (or Tories), the Labour Party, and the Liberal Democrats (who were known as just the Liberals before a 1988 merger with the Social Democrats). But that system looks set to at least partially collapse, pushing Britain toward a fractious multi-party system more commonly seen in continental Europe. How did the United Kingdom get here? What does it mean for the country's politics and elections? And most importantly, who is going to be prime minister after the May 7 elections?
How We Got Here
Coalition Government and the fall of the Liberal Democrats
In 2010, U.K. citizens voted out the incumbent Labour government that had served for the past 13 years under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, but they failed to give the Tories the majority they needed to form a government on their own. This was due to the Liberal Democrats, who won 23 percent of the vote and 57 seats, their highest vote percentage since 1983. More broadly, many interpreted the results to mean that the electorate was still reluctant to return the Conservatives to power after the exceptional depths in unpopularity the party reached in the 1990s.
Prime Minister David Cameron, who had led the Tories since 2005 and pulled them toward the center over strenuous objections by Conservative backbenchers, managed to become much more popular than his own party and remains so today. It's widely believed that he didn't mind being forced in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, as he had good relations with their leader, Nick Clegg, and it also offered a ready-made explanation (or excuse) as to why Cameron couldn't enact unpopular Conservative policy planks.
The coalition government's most controversial actions over the past five years have been what Cameron once called the "Age of Austerity," i.e. significant spending cuts meant to reduce the deficit, which had increased in the wake of the 2008 worldwide financial crises. After years of pain (frequently decried as unnecessary and wrong-headed by economist Paul Krugman), the coalition eventually did reduce the deficit, and Britain's economy is growing again after stalling out in 2012 during the worst of the austerity measures.
Moving forward to today, many voters have left the Lib Dems, particularly from the left-wing of the party that's unhappy with the coalition. Essentially, the average voter either supports the government, in which case they will vote Tory, or opposes it, in which case they will vote Labour. Any remaining reasons to vote Liberal Democrat in order for them to continue as a junior coalition partner are unclear.
In fact, this phenomenon started affecting the party almost as soon as the coalition was formed, with the Liberal Democrats falling to under 10 percent of the vote in polls within a year of the 2010 election. They've stayed there ever since. The party's main problem is a lack of an identifiable issue that separates them from both major parties, like the UK Independence Party (UKIP) or the Scottish National Party (SNP), on which there will be more below.
While the Tories and especially Labour and other leftist parties have gained voters from the Lib Dems, both main parties are also facing a surge in left-wing and right-wing parties taking voters on the edges.
Head below the fold for much more on the rapidly changing British landscape, including a look ahead at what we can expect on Election Day.
The rise of the UKIP
As mentioned, Cameron has yanked the Conservatives toward the center, notably on social issues like gay marriage, and more broadly has tried to paint the party as welcoming of diverse points of view, similar to continental European conservative parties. This has created an opening for those that prefer a more old-school, isolationist, U.S. Republican-style of conservatism, and has vaulted UKIP into a major player in British politics.
UKIP was found in 1993 in support of the country's withdrawal from the European Union. Today, it is best known for its hostility to immigration and is viewed as racist and xenophobic by critics. UKIP has had some success in electing representatives to the European Parliament (the legislative body of the Union), but many voters across Europe use those elections as an opportunity to cast protest votes. By contrast, in the past two general elections at home, UKIP won 2.3 percent and 3.1 percent—and no seats in the U.K. Parliament both times.
At the same time that Cameron has moderated his party, the issue of immigration became a top issue for the electorate and the one that has come to define UKIP. As a part of the European Union, the United Kingdom is required to allow unlimited migration from other EU countries. Since the accession of a number of poorer Eastern European countries in 2004 to the EU, immigration into the U.K. has exploded. Between 2004 and 2009, 1.5 million Eastern Europeans immigrated to the U.K. The percentage of people in England and Wales who were born outside the U.K. went from 9 percent in 2001 to 13 percent in 2011.
Nigel Farage, the party's leader, likes to (correctly) point out that the country cannot limit intra-European immigration without withdrawing from the EU. Cameron claims he plans to renegotiate with the EU over the issue but few believe significant changes can or will be made to Union policy. Therefore, for voters who believe limiting immigration is an important issue, UKIP is the only real answer.
UKIP broke through in local elections in 2012, winning 13 percent of the vote and numerous local council seats, making it the third most-popular party in the country. Since then, it has consistently polled in the teens for the upcoming general election.
Last year, Cameron promised a referendum on EU membership by 2017 as an appeal to UKIP voters. This is seen as a way to counter UKIP's strongest argument that they are the only way out of the EU while giving Cameron time to "renegotiate" certain aspects of Britain's membership and then win the referendum. But the Tories, the UKIP, and a supportive minor party, the Democratic Unionist Party, don't actually have enough votes to pass a bill in Parliament to authorize a referendum, so it's an open question as to whether Cameron can actually move forward with this plan. The Liberal Democrats oppose a referendum but it may be negotiable from their point of view.
The Scottish Independence Referendum and the rise of the SNP
The apparent landslide victory to come for the SNP is born out of a crushing defeat last year. The SNP's raison d'etre is an independent Scotland. Having finally secured a referendum on the issue after decades of trying, they almost shocked the world and won it, but ultimately, proponents of independence lost 55-45.
Forty-five percent of the vote is a heartbreaking percentage for a Yes/No referendum but a great percentage in a multi-party, "First Past the Post" system. The big three parties (known as the "Westminster parties," since they're based in Westminster, the site of Parliament in London) had banded together to jointly run the "No" campaign, and bad blood remains between the Yes/SNP side and the No/Westminster side. This doesn't matter much for the Tories, however, who have only one Scottish MP, or the Lib Dems, whose problems were evident long before the referendum.
However, this new equilibrium is crushing for the Labour Party, which held 40 of the 59 Scottish seats in the last Parliament. It has lost many supporters of Scottish independence to the SNP, while voters planning to vote Tory or Lib Dem (or even UKIP or Green) have remained with their parties. So now, the SNP is polling in the low to mid-40s across Scotland and as a result will likely sweep almost all of the seats in the country and decimate Labour.
This sounds terrible for the Labour Party's attempt to regain power, and it's certainly not good news, but it's also not as bad as it seems. Beyond independence, the SNP is a left-wing party and has vowed to oppose the Tories no matter what. (The Tories have been unpopular in Scotland since Margaret Thatcher implemented budget cuts in Scotland during the 1980s to test them out before bringing them to the rest of the U.K.) So by default, SNP MPs can be counted on to support Labour's attempt to form a government following the election. But both Labour and the SNP have ruled out a formal coalition, so the exact form of a possible Labour government backed by the SNP is unclear.
Where The Parties Stand
Conservatives
The Conservative Party held a healthy majority in Parliament at least once during every decade of the 20th century but now seems to have lost the ability to win the 323 seats necessary to control the chamber outright. In 2010, the Tories won a 36-29 percent victory over Labour but only netted 306 seats. This was partly caused by the strong showing of the Liberal Democrats (who took 23 percent nationally), though at least that won't be an issue for Conservatives in this election.
However, the Tories have other problems. Chief among them is the curious fact that Labour often "wins small and loses big," which is to say that they're on the right side of tight races while conceding blowouts. Even though Labour is more closely associated with U.S. Democrats, this phenomenon is akin to one that often benefits Republicans, allowing both parties to outperform in seat counts compared to their share of the popular vote. (Democrats, for instance, won a majority of the House popular vote in 2012 but Republicans still retained more seats.)
The strength of the Conservative Party is in the English countryside, where it all but wiped out Labour in 2010. Particularly in Southwest and Southeast England, many seats are contested between the Tories and the Lib Dems, with Labour lagging behind. The Tories also run competitively in smaller cities and in the suburbs and outskirts of London.
The Conservatives should gain around 10 seats from the Lib Dems, which would theoretically put them within shouting distance of a majority if they were able to hold all of their current seats. However, that will almost certainly not happen as Labour is expected to pick up between 30 and 60 seats from the Tories. These LAB-CON marginals will decide the UK's next prime minister.
Labour
Labour regularly polls as the most popular party in England, but its candidate for prime minister, Ed Miliband, lags significantly behind David Cameron on any specific question you might ask. Miliband has actually benefited from low expectations, as the Tories and Conservative press have painted him as a disaster, only for him to seem reasonable and confident at the debates and on the stump. He won't win it for Labour, but there's less of a belief now that he'll lose it for them, either.
Labour's strongholds are London, Wales, the industrial cities in Northern England (think Manchester and Liverpool), and, until this election, Scotland. In 2010, the party won 26 out of 40 seats in Wales and 41 out of 59 seats in Scotland, to go along with 191 seats in England. While Labour struggles mightily in Southern England, it's much more competitive in the Midlands and Northern England outside of the cities. This, along with the outskirts of London, is where many competitive LAB-CON marginals will be.
Labour should largely hold all of the 215 seats it currently has in England and Wales and, like the Tories, they should pick up about 10 seats from the Lib Dems. They can also count on around 55 votes for Miliband from Scotland, though most of those votes will come from SNP MPs who are about to steamroll Labour incumbents. That, combined with 30 likely gains from the Conservatives, will get Labour to 305 votes for Miliband. The final 20 votes that Miliband will need could come from a mix of LAB-CON marginals that are toss-ups, and/or from minor left-wing parties.
Liberal Democrats
Getting into government can be both a dream and a nightmare for a smaller party. For the first time since the 1970s, the Liberal Democrats were able to influence the way Britain was governed. Their leader, Nick Clegg, was deputy prime minister, and for the past five years, the Lib Dems were in every important meeting and part of every important decision. Now the bill has come due, as they will likely return half their number to the next Parliament on less than half their previous vote.
It was inevitable, really, as the Lib Dems have often portrayed themselves as not-Labour to center-left voters and not-Tories to center-right voters. Once they joined a coalition government, half of their base was necessarily going to wind up displeased. The Liberal Democrats are strongest in Southwest England, areas with universities, and small-to-midsize towns.
With 56 seats at the end of the last Parliament, the Lib Dems are expected to hold just 25-30 constituencies, and about 8-10 percent of the vote, down from 23 percent in 2010. They'll likely lose something close to 10 seats each to the Tories, Labour, and the SNP.
UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party)
Even though they won no seats in 2010, at the end of the last Parliament, UKIP has two MPs. Both were Tories who resigned their seats and won by-elections (what we'd call special elections) as UKIP candidates. The good news for UKIP is that they will almost certainly retain a presence in Parliament, as Douglas Carswell is a heavy favorite to retain his seat in Clacton on the east coast.
The party also has a decent chance to hang on to its other seat (Rochester and Strood, in the South East) in a tough fight with the Conservatives. UKIP may gain seats, too, and almost all would come at the expense of the Tories. But they have few targets, and a net of six seats would constitute a huge victory.
The party's strength is white working-class voters, particularly older voters, spread across rural and suburban England. While UKIP is a right-wing party and more of a threat to the Tories overall, it draws voters from both major parties. In Labour-dominated Northern England, the party is expected to come in a strong second in many constituencies.
Even though UKIP will likely earn the third-most votes—somewhere in the teens percentage-wise—it will struggle to beat out tiny Plaid Cymru as the fifth-largest non-Northern Irish party in terms of the number of members it sends to Parliament. First past the post is by far the worst election method for a small party like UKIP whose support is diffusely spread around the country rather than concentrated in any one particular area.
A proportional system, often used elsewhere in Europe, would see UKIP crash the election the way a similar anti-immigration party, the Swedish Democrats, have in their own country—an event last year that prevented either the traditional left or the traditional right from gaining a majority and nearly forced new elections. That role will instead go to the party that figures out how to swap the UKIP's wide but thin support for concentrated geographic dominance.
SNP (Scottish National Party)
As we've alluded above, the SNP is expected to become the new big player on the Westminster stage, even though it will win fewer votes than UKIP, the Lib Dems, and even the Green Party. That's because they only run candidates in Scotland, so most voters cannot vote for them and they max out at the 59 seats within Scottish borders. However, if current polling is accurate, they are expected to win an impressive 50 to 55 of the 59 seats they're contesting. At most, there are 13 competitive seats in Scotland that may not go the SNP's way, which means there are 46 seats not even worth discussing. To put that in perspective, in 2010 the SNP won just six seats.
There's a stigma associated with the SNP, and while it isn't as high as it is for the far-left and far-right parties in continental Europe, it's also not just another party. All three major Westminster parties have ruled out a formal coalition with them, as have the SNP themselves. Recently Cameron has been trying to use the idea of the SNP backing Labour as a scare tactic with English voters, even though Miliband has ruled out any sort of deal, either formal or informal, with the SNP. However, as long as the party is committed to getting Cameron out of Number 10 Downing Street (the British version of the White House), it's difficult not to count their seats for Miliband, even if he promises them nothing.
Plaid Cymru
Plaid Cymru (pronounced plyed come-re) is like the SNP for Wales, only vastly less successful. For a variety of historical reasons, the independence movement in Wales is much weaker than in Scotland, and most of Wales continues to vote for the major Westminster parties. They currently hold only three of 40 Welsh seats in Parliament and are expected to remain within one seat of that number. Outside of Welsh independence, the party's ideology aligns closely with the SNP, and they advocate more progressive policies than Labour, including an end to austerity.
The Green Party
The Green Party has grown in popularity in some ways that echo UKIP's rise on the right, but on a smaller and more gradual scale. The Greens have benefited from the decline of the Liberal Democrats, as some left-wing voters who never felt comfortable with Labour moved from the Lib Dems to the Greens. The party elected its first MP in 2010, Caroline Lucas, and she should hold onto her seat comfortably. No other seat is expected to go Green. The party's support is geographically diffuse like UKIP's, making it difficult to actually win seats in the FPTP system. The party was briefly polling at the same level as the Lib Dems at the beginning of the year, with both at around 8 percent, but has since fallen back to around 5 percent.
The Northern Ireland Parties
If all that weren't complicated enough, 18 MPs will be elected from Northern Ireland—the Protestant-majority part of the island that remains a part of the United Kingdom—and none of the parties previously mentioned seriously contest seats there. Here is a summary of the NI parties and how they fared last election, which is a good approximation for the seats they'll hold in the upcoming Parliament:
- Democratic Unionist Party (DUP): The DUP is the largest NI party, with eight seats. If the Conservatives are only a few seats short a majority, they could come into play (which would be a first for a NI party), and they'd likely seek additional money for Northern Ireland in return for their vote.
- Sinn Féin: The second-largest NI party with five seats. Sinn Féin's members, who've included Gerry Adams, refuse to take their seats in Parliament as a protest against UK rule (a practice known as abstentionism), which means that a prime minister needs only 323 votes to secure a majority, not 326.
- Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP): The third-largest party with three seats. While SDLP is a separate party, they are affiliated with the Westminster-based Labour Party and can be counted on to support Labour in any key vote.
- Alliance Party: Allied with the Liberal Democrats, Alliance has one seat in parliament and will try to hold onto it. Notably, the Alliance Party is the only major non-sectarian party in Northern Ireland.
- Ulster Unionist Party: Shut out in the last election, the UUP has made an electoral pact with the DUP in an attempt to win back two seats.
There is also one independent (Sylvia Hermon) fighting for re-election. She'd be expected to support Labour if the majority came down to her vote.
Polling and Electoral Predictions
Lord Ashcroft
Prior to this cycle, public polls of individual constituencies were rare. The press and public relied on national polls and relied on a model called Uniform National Swing (UNS), which adjusts the previous results to the overall shift in support between Labour and Conservatives.
The breakdown of the existing party system has made UNS less reliable, while at the same time there has been a significant increase in constituency polls. The vast majority of these have been commissioned by Michael Ashcroft, a former Tory member of the House of Lords. (He recently resigned his seat to focus on other things, including polling.) While it's quite odd that a partisan has paid for the vast majority of public polling, the surveys have been conducted by firms that are members of the British Polling Council and have generally fallen in line with other polls.
These polls have significantly livened up the seat by seat analysis of the election. Ashcroft's polls were among the first to show how much trouble the Scottish branch of the Labour Party was. They've also shown where the Lib Dems have been able to hold on thanks to the personal popularity of their local MPs, and where they've fallen off a cliff. And of course, Ashcroft has polled many of the LAB-CON marginals, finding no fewer than 26 individual seats where Labour has pulled ahead of the Conservatives.
National Polls
YouGov has been conducting a nightly poll since the beginning of the year that generally hovers around a tie or 1 to 2 percent Labour lead. At least half a dozen other outfits also semi-regularly conduct national polls.
There has been a small divide between phone and online pollsters, with the phone pollsters marginally more favorable toward the Tories and the online polls more favorable toward Labour. The Tories likely need a slightly larger margin than that to put together a majority, but the phone polls put the election on a knife's edge, while the online polls indicate a much clearer pro-Miliband majority.
Recent polls can be found here.
Prediction Sites
May2015 is a site created just for the election by the New Statesman, a British news magazine, and is an excellent place to track the numbers. Election Forecast U.K. and U.K. Polling Report are also worth a look. May2015 allows you to choose different models and scenarios and see how the results would change accordingly.
As of April 28, here is where all of the major prognosticators (as aggregated by May2015) have the race:
(click to enlarge)
For the Tories, the magic number is 290. If they reach that, they can likely form a coalition with the Lib Dems (25) and the DUP (eight) to hang onto power. UKIP will also have a handful of seats, but the Tories and Lib Dems would prefer to avoid dealing with them if possible.
For Labour, the magic number is 260 seats in England and Wales. With those seats, they can form a pro-Miliband coalition with 55 Scottish seats (either Labour or SNP), and eight minor party left-wing seats (three Plaid Cymru, three SLDP, one Green, and independent Sylvia Hermon).
"Portillo" Moments
In 1997, Conservative Defence Secretary Michael Portillo was shockingly defeated in what was believed to be a safe seat. His name has since entered British political lexicon, signifying a surprising loss of a leading party member. The closest comparison to American politics would be then-Speaker Tom Foley's loss in 1994 during the Republican Revolution.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg is a leading contender for a possible "Portillo moment," under threat from a strong Labour challenge. The last poll in late March showed him 2 percent behind Labour opponent Oliver Coppard. His loss would represent how much damage the coalition with the Tories has done to the Liberal Democrats.
After Clegg, other potential Portillo moments come from Scotland, where every notable Scottish Labour and Liberal Democrat MP is under threat. Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander (seen as a possible future leader), Labour Shadow Foreign Minister Douglas Alexander (no relation), and Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy could all lose their seats to the SNP.
No Conservatives with a profile as high as Portillo are vulnerable, but education secretary Nicky Morgan in Loughborough is the most prominent Tory cabinet member at risk.
The Election Landscape
Like the U.S. House of Representatives, each member of Parliament (MP) represents one district (called a constituency), which are roughly equal in population. There are 650 seats in total, and ever since the 2010 elections, a coalition now numbering 302 Conservatives and 56 Liberal Democrats has held power, with Cameron serving as prime minister. Labour, the second-largest party, holds 256 seats, while nine small parties and a handful of independents represent the balance. (A full breakdown is here.)
Each party may nominate a candidate in each constituency, and whoever earns the most votes wins, without needing to reach a certain percentage of the vote. Because there are often more than two competitive candidates, many MPs are elected with pluralities in the 40s, or even the 30s. (This electoral method is known as "first past the post," or FPTP, drawing on imagery from horse racing.)
Because of this, the parties typically invest strategically and focus only on winnable seats, while voters often vote tactically for candidates who can plausibly win. As a result, most competitive seats, called marginals, turn into two-party races. So a "LAB-CON" marginal, for example, would describe a competitive race between Labour and the Tories (Conservatives), while an "LD-CON" marginal is a competitive race between the Liberal Democrats and the Tories.
While the term "England" is often (mistakenly) used by Americans to refer to the United Kingdom as a whole, England itself is just one of the countries that make up the UK, along with Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and many smaller islands. England, however, is the largest such country and is therefore home to the greatest number of constituencies. For most of recent English history, the these seats were fought over exclusively by the three major parties (Labour, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats).
Most English marginals have traditionally been LAB-CON, but many constituencies in the southwest are LD-CON, and many areas with universities are LAB-LD. However, the recent rise of once-minor parties has increased both the number of marginal seats and the various two- or even three-party face-offs that each marginal constituency can face.
For example, the constituency of South Thanet (all seats are named, not numbered) is a three-way marginal between the Tories, Labour, and the new U.K. Independence Party, or UKIP (more on them later). It had previously been a LAB-CON marginal, and was carried by the victorious majority party in every election for the past thirty years. (For almost a century, the position of prime minister has been held either by a Tory or a Labour MP.) South Thanet has long been, in other words, what we might call a classic "swing seat" in the United States, but with UKIP leader Nigel Farage running here this year, polling has shown all three parties ahead at different times.
One other important factor is the two major unofficial "blocs," between parties, each led by the two largest, Labour and the Tories. Several smaller parties, including the Scottish National Party (SNP), the Welsh regional party Plaid Cymru, and the Green Party, are informally aligned with Labour ideologically; likewise, UKIP and the Lib Dems would be part of a Tory bloc. While the two biggest parties would of course prefer to win outright majorities in Parliament, they can also cobble together ruling coalitions with their partners. That might make for a bumpier ride, but Labour, for instance, would rather win a LAB-CON marginal than a LAB-SNP seat because that will get them closer to forming the next government.
The Liberal Democrats are the only party that could conceivably switch blocs from the Tories to Labour. Every other party is either to the left of Labour or to the right of the Tories, so it would be all but impossible for them to reach across the aisle. The expressed preference of the Lib Dems' leader, Nick Clegg, is to work with the largest party, which in 2010 was the Tories. Clegg and his party's leadership also have poor relations with Labour, though that problem could get resolved in extreme fashion if Clegg loses his seat, which is very possible.
Regardless, it's difficult to see any result in which the Lib Dems can determine who holds power. The Conservatives will either beat Labour handily (by 30 seats or more) and remain the obvious choice to stay in power, or they'll fail to win enough seats for another CON-LIB coalition to reach a majority, in which case Labour won't need the Lib Dems to take charge anyway.
So despite the Russian nesting doll complexity of this election, it will most likely come down to about 30 LAB-CON marginals across England that the Tories won by mid- to high-single digits in 2010. They will need to hold onto most of those to maintain power in a coalition with the weakened Liberal Democrats.
Come back next week for a seat-by-seat roundup of the most hotly contested constituencies throughout the United Kingdom. Barring an extraordinary shock, though, the SNP will emerge as a newfound force in British politics, while the Liberal Democrats will see their standing suffer. We don't know which party will emerge as the winner, but the once-stable Westminster triumvirate looks like it will be altered dramatically, and perhaps forever. May 7 is going to be a wild ride.
A special thanks to UK-based community member conspiracy for contributing his expertise to this piece.