The UK General Election

Today Tony Blair announced a general election for Thursday, May 5, just over four weeks away. I’ve followed British politics for forty-five years and every general election since October 1964. Indeed I can even remember the election of October 1959. And, regardless of my anarchist sympathies, I’ll be closely following developments in what promises to be a much more interesting election than the previous one in 2001.

I’m sure few if any readers of Liberty & Power need reminding that the government of the United Kingdom depends upon majority support in the House of Commons. If the composition of the Commons changes sufficiently, the government will change. Thus next month’s election will indirectly determine the administration for the next four or five years—unless, of course, no party received an overall majority, in which case another election might well occur sooner rather than later.

The number of Scottish parliamentary constituencies has been reduced from 72 to 59 (and their boundaries redrawn) to reflect the devolution of power to the Scottish Assembly. This means the new parliament will have 646 MPs instead of 659.

Many bills currently before Parliament will lapse, including the government's plans to introduce compulsory ID cards.

Useful sites include the BBC News and several sites dedicated to British elections and this one in particular. Go here for forecasts, including one which shows how even if the Conservatives were to receive eight per cent more votes than Labour, Labour would nonetheless win a plurality of seats. Go here and here for polls. Go here to follow the betting. (Over there you can bet on the election results by visiting your local betting shop and millions of Britons do.) And go here to read details of past elections.

What is not generally known is that in 1997, when Labour swept the Conservatives from power, Labour received 575,096 votes fewer than had the Conservatives in 1992, when the Tories narrowly retained power under John Major. Even more striking is that in 2001 Labour received 835,531 votes fewer than Labour had gotten under Neil Kinnock when they lost in 1992. The outcome of the 1997 and 2001 elections reflected differential falls in turnout (the Tory vote slumped in 1997 and both Labour and Tories lost millions more votes in 2001). And now it looks as if the result of next month’s election will turn not only on a moderate Conservative recovery under Michael Howard but also on a further huge slump in the Labour vote thanks to the disillusionment of Labour voters with Tony Blair.