It's goodbye for Labour leader Ed Miliband, but what's next for his party?
With a majority of 12 seats for his party and the likely backing of another 10 Northern Irish Unionists as needed, Tory Prime Minister David Cameron should not have too much trouble holding onto power in the United Kingdom for the next five years. The anti-immigrant U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), despite winning just one seat, ended up with an impressive vote total and will likely see Cameron put forth their referendum on European Union membership that's been their top priority. But except for the Scottish National Party (SNP), British parties in the center and on the left are licking their wounds and looking to future elections.
Leadership elections: Nominating 2020 contenders in 2015
Imagine that the Republicans had elected their nominee for the 2016 presidential election in the spring of 2013—someone who would then lead the party for the next four years before actually facing voters. This is how British parties traditionally work, with David Cameron having been first elected in 2005 and recently departed Labor leader Ed Miliband in 2010, soon after their parties' respective defeats at the polls. Both Labour and the decimated Liberal Democrats face leadership elections this year, and barring what would be a midstream change somewhere further down the line, the winner of Labour's will be the center-left candidate for prime minister at the next general election, all the way in 2020.
Leadership candidates are nominated by members of parliament (MPs) and elected by all members of the party in a postal vote. (This is a new change for Labour, whic previously had a much more complex system giving MPs and union members more weight.) For Labour, a candidate needs 35 MPs out of 233 to earn a nomination, and for the Lib Dems, a candidate needs 2 of the 8 party's remaining MPs. For the Lib Dems, ballot papers go out June 24th and voting closes July 15th, with the new leader announced the next day. Labour is sending out ballots August 14th and ending the voting on September 10th, with the new leader announced at the party's annual conference on September 12th.
Below the fold we'll look at the Labour competition first, then the Liberal Democrats, before touching on what the SNP hopes to accomplish in the next parliament.
Labour: "Change," but what kind?
Ed Miliband was widely seen as one of the furthest left members of his own shadow cabinet, and the competition to replace him has already narrowed to a question that will feel familiar to followers of American politics: How can the party can appeal to more voters without turning off its base? Chuka Umunna, seen as one of the top candidates, dropped out three days after announcing his candidacy (blaming reporters who were allegedly hounding his family). After other candidates eventually declined to run, the race shrank to three main contenders. The top two candidates right now are union favorite Andy Burnham and up-and-comer Liz Kendall, with longtime MP Yvette Cooper just behind them.
Andy Burnham previously ran for leader in 2010, coming in fourth, and has been seen as one of the favorites since the election night exit polls revealed Labour would not be forming a government. Burnham is viewed as the candidate closest to the major trade unions and is from the party's northern heartland, giving him a strong establishment launching pad. Burnham has declared himself the "change candidate" to try and head off the idea that he would be a continuation of Brown and Miliband's leadership. He has focused on Labour being seen as an aspirational party that can bring people together, rather than on trying to move the party ideologically.
Liz Kendall, just elected in 2010, was the first candidate to declare and has benefited from a strong early performance, as well as the fact that candidates with similar profiles, like Umunna and Tristram Hunt, decided not to run and endorsed her instead. Kendall represents the Blairite, business-friendly wing of the party, though you won't catch her mentioning the still-loathed former leader. This early headline sums up her campaign's view of Miliband's leftist stances ("Liz Kendall: Labour must ditch 'fantasy' that Britain has moved to the left"). Kendall is trying to thread a difficult needle: She wants to present herself as fresh face who can move the party to the center, but not in the way Blair did. On the other hand, Blair remains the only Labour leader to win a general election since 1974, so perhaps Labour party members may be willing to consider a more centrist candidate and message.
Yvette Cooper, an MP since 1997 is longtime leading party figure and also the wife of Ed Balls, the former Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer who lost his own re-election bid. However, she's stumbled out of the gate. Cooper seems to be well-liked and well-thought of by both MPs and the party, but suffers from the lack of a well-defined purpose or natural electoral base. She was viewed as a loyal cabinet minister to Blair, Brown, and Miliband, so her ideological standing is muddled. As trade unionists, leftists, and the Miliband wing flock to Burnham while Blairites, centrists, and businesses move to Kendall, Cooper risks getting left behind. However, if the Burnham/Kendall fight gets nasty, Cooper could benefit as a compromise candidate acceptable to everyone.
Liberal Democrats: Away from Cleggmania
Despite the Liberal Democrats' scalding defeat that took them from 56 seats to just eight, the party is much more likely to rebound rather than disintegrate. As opposed to relative flash-in-the-pan parties like UKIP, the Lib Dems have existed in some form since 1859, making them one of the oldest active political parties in existence anywhere in the world. They hold thousands of local offices across Great Britain and maintain a strong local infrastructure in many places. Eight seats isn't even the party's all time low, as they were left with just five seats in 1957 after the party lost a by-election.
Two MPs, Tim Farron and Norman Lamb, have announced and are expected to be the only two candidates. Farron is seen as the favorite, since he stayed out of the coalition cabinet created by former leader Nick Clegg, who had aligned the Lib Dems with the Tories. (That coalition was directly responsible for the Lib Dem disaster.) He previously served as president of the party (similar to chairman of the DNC or RNC) from 2011 to 2014, which is elected by party members like the leader elections. Farron is generally seen as left-of-center and is a member of the progressive Beveridge Group within the party.
However, Farron voted against and later abstained from some gay rights votes, an issue he's now tried to get in front of by promising that LGBT rights will be at the top of his agenda. Farron has also said he'd like to change the name of the party back to the Liberals, which is how the party was known from its formation until a 1988 merger with the Social Democratic Party.
Lamb, on the other hand, served as Nick Clegg's private secretary (sort of an outreach director to the party's MPs) and later in the coalition cabinet. His ties to Clegg will be tough to overcome in the leadership election. While Lamb has now dubbed Clegg's broken promise not to raise tuition fees a "debacle" (even though he voted with his party to raise them), he's still maintained that entering the coalition was in the nation's best interest. The Lib Dems' shorter primary schedule (voting starts in less than a month) also does him no favors, as the party's disastrous results under Clegg are still fresh in everyone's minds.
SNP: More devolved powers for Holyrood
Given Labour's failure at the polls, the SNP won't be joining an anti-Tory majority, so instead the party will refocus its efforts on gaining as much new power for the Scottish parliament (known as Holyrood) as possible. During last year's referendum campaign for Scottish independence, the three major Westminster parties (Labour, the Tories, and the Liberal Democrats) all vowed to grant further powers to Scotland as a way to ward off a successful independence vote. It worked—or at least, the referendm failed—and the cross-party Smith Commission has made a series of recommendations. These include allowing Holyrood "to set separate rates of income tax, greater borrowing, and new powers over housing benefit."
Those recommendations have to pass the U.K. Parliament first, and they almost certainly will, but the SNP is seeking additional powers as well. According to the Guardian, the left-wing SNP wants the ability "to increase the minimum wage in Scotland at a faster rate than the U.K., control national insurance rates, introduce separate equality policies, and set other business taxes independently."
The SNP also strongly opposes the UKIP's E.U. referendum that is likely going to be held within the next two years and has proposed a "double lock," meaning that all four countries within Great Britain—England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales—would each have to vote to leave the EU for such a measure to go into effect. While this proposal almost certainly won't be adopted, if Great Britain did vote to leave the EU, the SNP would likely see that as reason enough to hold a second independence referendum. The benefits of EU membership and the questionable place an independent Scotland would have in the EU was a major argument against independence in 2014, so if that were flipped, that could easily change the outcome.
While British election observers have plenty to keep an eye on in the coming months, most of the action over the next few years will be parliamentary rather than electoral. Labour and the Lib Dems will both engage in a lot of soul-searching to try to reverse their fortunes, while the Tories will hope to hold on to their gains. But 2020 is a very long way off—back in 2003, no one could have predicted Barack Obama would become president—so there will be a lot to watch.