Sadly E.J. Dionne doesn’t understand what’s happening at all. Nor do most of the politicians and journalists in the UK.

Many of the letter writers here DO understand what’s happening. Change the old two party system can’t cope with because an educated electorate understands that the political process is years behind where the electorate is trying to go.

In any first past the post election, in each electorate there is a two candidate race except in the rarest of situations. In this situation small parties always shed votes to someone who’s got a chance of winning. People vote against their real interest, and vote for someone they don’t support, to keep out someone they like even less.

The key to what might be happening in the UK, is the possibility of electoral change. Changes in the upper house, and moving to a proportional representation electoral system. Nick Clegg thinks he’s been offered a public vote on electoral change.  The promise he has is likely to be worthless. The Conservatives and the Labour Party will BOTH work against any effort to change the system. They will do everything they can to mangle the wording of the referendum, and to destroy the real potential of voting system change.

If voters are angry enough, they will vote for change anyway. What I’ve just described is what happened here in NZ 20 years ago. Sadly, because the politicians tried to create a system that “wouldn’t be workable” and that the public would reject, we don’t have the best system they could design. We have instead the worst system they could think of. Even so, our new system, MMP, is much better than what we had. The NZ public was quite right to say “plague on both your houses” and to vote for change and against BOTH the main political parties (and against the business lobby).

Proportional Representation is the future for the UK.

Sadly in the USA, The Democrats and the Republicans have so gerrymandered the system that success for a third party looks impossible. The system in the USA isn’t democratic, needed change is being avoided. The two party system isn’t serving the electorate, it serves the funding sources. The USA is in decline, and the rot will continue until something breaks.

Let’s hope that Clegg’s promised of electoral change
actually happens, otherwise it won’t be long before the
electorate becomes disillusioned once again!

The real significance of this election is that the Tories have come to resemble,
on the surface, a continental conservative Social Democratic Party. Such a party
must accept a robust social benefit system while getting finances under
control. That’s its mandate, and it succeeds or fails according to that mandate. 
The far right proto-Tories have to live with this reality or mumble their way
into forming a new party. If you want to understand the center of the Tory Party
learn about the family of Kate Middleton, the probable bride to be of Prince Wm
and the future queen, or consort, or whatever she would be called within the
theater of the feudal.

New Labour was Americanized into accepting no regulation of financial
institutions and a reliance on financial trading as the engine of economic
growth (and collapse). As a result the UK saw income inequality rise, the dole
become accepted as permanent state of being (even for young graduates of
posh schools), and the lords of finance cheerily take the nation to the
poorhouse door. These lords, as the nation became poorer, became richer.
Same story as in US because the script was written in the US.

All three parties, and any British government, stand a far better chance of
effectively regulating the financial industries than does the government of the
US. The big challenge is to find two-three industries to replace finance as the
engine of economic growth.

Omygodnotagain thanks. I would agree with pretty much all of what you say there but would add that the Brits are suspicious of Europe period. One has to remember that they were not part of the EU at its creation. It was “born” during the cold war, the Americans, the Russians and the Brits were all suspicious of it. Its Franco-German core has remained pretty much intact to this day, the other countries are just later additions. Yes arguments about the French butter mountain are perennial. But the main point is still the reluctance of the Brits to (as they see it) surrender their sovereignty. They won’t of course but they see it like that.
Being British myself but having lived 26 years in Germany (and working for the Americans I won’t say for who) the anti-European rhetoric coming from the UK makes me laugh, all the more so when I see how serious they are with their imagined angst for Europe. This means that whenever a new party comes to power the European question is always in the forefront. This means that British politics has stagnated. As has American politics with its constant harping on homosexuality, patriotism and abortion, or as Gore Vidal has put it: the flag, the fetus and the faggot.

What happens in Europe ultimately comes to America. Get ready for a wild summer & November election (Utah has already proved that with the ousting of a ‘career republican politician).

Mike3
Nice post, one of the reasons Brits are wary of Europe is the cultural attitude to taxes. A few years ago a study was done to find out which citizen of the countries in Europe are most honest about paying taxes. At the top were Scandanavian countries, the Dutch and the British, at the bottom was France, and Italy. In other words the French in this case do not walk the talk. Similarly, farm subsidies are protected in France, and there are refrigerated boats with stockpiles of produce floating in the Atlantic to keep prices high, while at the same time other subsidies by other countries to protect their markets are condemned by the French. The Brits and the Germans feel they put in a lot more than they get out. That all the talk of fraternity and fairness is a lot of hot air. I do think the financial restructure makes a lot of sense. Pity our politicians are owned body and soul by Wall Street.

Excellent post by greenuprising and the last post. Let me just add to what you both say. Even if there was proportional representation in the UK Nick Clegg would still not be prime minister. There would be three parties holding about one third of the vote. Even more hung than it is. More just, hell yes, I agree, but with the same problem. And something you both may know or not, is that Clegg is pro-Europe, and most Brits are still unsure where they stand on Europe. So although there was immediate support for him after the debate; where he outperformed the other two: this support is limited because of his views on immigration and Europe. The electoral system does need changing agreed, but what really needs to change in the UK is the realization that it’s part of Europe, that its future IS Europe not America. Until that happens nothing will change. Oh; and Merkel and the French are now putting together a system that will control the free booting of the casino, scavenging market, another point the Brits don’t agree on.

I grew up in Britain, and voted Liberal. As greenuprising noted the electoral system is very flawed. Here is why, of the 650 seats open, the Liberals only got 57 despite getting 23% of the vote. In other words nearly one quarter of Britains voted Lib/Dem but they ended up with less than 10% of the seats. Labor has benefited for years from this as shown by the fact Labor got 29% (just 6% than the Lib/Dem)of the vote but got 258 seats, nearly 40% of the seats.  If one’s vote is to mean anything it should be reflected in the make up of the government. There needs to be fewer seats and a fudge factor that allows for MPs of under represented voters to be assigned to Parliament or ministers appointed to Cabinet positions from the under represented parties.
Otherwise there can never be change via the ballot box.

The first lesson of the British vote is that their electoral system, which we copied, sucks.  Labour “outpolled the Lib Dems by six percentage points in the popular vote and won more than four times as many seats.”  How is that possible, you ask (you should ask; did anyone ask)??  Because the “winner-take-all”, “first-past-the-post,” “plurality rule” electoral system dictates that the party with the most votes in a district, not a majority, mind you, wins the whole kabooty.  So just getting ahead of two or three or sixteen other candidates by a point or two gives you the whole district, never mind that most people (a majority, that is) voted against you.  In America we call this “majority rule.”  It ain’t, and it ain’t democratic, but that’s how we and the Brits do things.

The second lesson is that bi- or tri-partisan pandering to the muddled middle class “center” gives everyone an opportunity to divide the vote.  The outcome doesn’t end up telling us much of anything, because no one represented anything.  We don’t have positions to vote for, we have personalities and competing claims of competence.  Is there anything less telling than a People Magazine poll?

But yes, Britain is divided because the new economy is no more a unifier than the old, because there are lots of victims out there who cling to Labour, of all parties, because they fear being victimized more by the Tories.  A decent electoral system would give them, and us, some real choices; but it will take a revolution of some sort to give us even that.

Well, the four sister nations:n.irish, scottish, welsh, and english are still happy even after losing in 40s half of the world.

The reason for that is that they via US now posses a tad more than half of the planet, but w.o. missiles or bombs landing in their yards, markets, football parks.

And the food is getting daily tastier. Football games more grandiose. And even ordinary peasnts becoming sirs such as mcarthney and elton john.

And i will never ever be knighted because bohunks don`t have this ritual. tnx

What the result shows is that the British people are still clueless as to the cause of their woes. The obvious choice was Nick Clegg but they rejected him for the brain dead Left and the brain dead Right. Nothing will change.

The Brits are feed up with the stupid wars, the conservatives promised to end the
Afghanistan involvement, good on them.

Commune115, May 7 at 4:56 pm:
‘Labour took big losses because its “centrist” polices were a joke. As the Mexican writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II once said, “the centre is nothing.”’

Actually, in the big liberal-capitalist-imperialist states like Britain, France, and, of course, the United States, the center is everything.

BEWARE OF THE HANGING CHADS!!!
Experience says don’t sell out to a conservative during a time of discontent. Clegg should barter for his liberal Dems knowing it is the best that can be done this time. After all, they were expecting to have much higher results and didn’t get the support. Position for the next election but don’t sell out to a conservative.

Labour took big losses because its “centrist” polices were a joke. As the Mexican writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II once said, “the centre is nothing.” British workers need revolutionary change, unfortunately the globalized world of materialism and toys has turned us into a very timid generation. Even in Latin America you can see how centrist leftist politics yield nothing but defeat. The right-wing has taken back Chile and could very well take back Brazil, while in Bolivia for example, the more revolutionary ruling party has seen its support grow. People want real change, not timid bureaucrats.

I’m sure you’ve heard the term ‘Cutting off your nose to spite your face’. That’s what the British would have done if they’d elected the Tories to punish Labour. Cameron wants to dismantle the National Health Service and he wants to farm the entire social security system out to private companies. This would have led, as it did in my country, to people with brain injuries fitting on the floor of welfare offices and then having their payment cut off because they failed to put their form in. He also wanted to dismantle public schools and turn them into 19th century cottage industries. Faced with this Orwellian future the people of Britain basically said ‘A plague on both your houses’ and have produced a hung parliament. The right choice in the circumstances. Gordon Brown would do a much better job of managing the fragile British economy than the slasher movie Cameron had in mind. All western economies need to remember that to create real wealth you have to produce something and sell it, not get involved in global Ponzi schemes.