EDITORIAL
7 May election: the situation in Great Britain was never as uncertain. Parliament contented between 4-5 parties. The government’s future at stake
Next May 7 England will go to the polls to renew its parliament and the surveys are driving mad the staff of outgoing Premier David Cameron, and Ed Miliband, his Labour opponent. According to electoral projections the two majority parties are at 33%, while for other surveys Cameron’s Conservatives should still manage to be the first parties, without reaching an absolute majority. Thus the only certain thing is that also this time, as in 2010, there will no be a clear winner, and it will be necessary to form a coalition government, negotiating post-vote alliances, in the face of all those who continue believing in the rather simplistic idea that Great Britain is home to the two-party system and a model of clarity for many political systems. In reality, the English political system stopped being a two-party system in the 1970s; the national political system’s decade-long transformation within the national political system, increasingly resembling a traditional multi-party system, with four-five large parties, was concealed thanks to strong distortions in the electoral Law. Moreover, while in 2010 the only possible coalition was the current cabinet coalition consisting of Conservative and Liberal-Democrats, surveys show that this time the outcomes of the polls could bring about a much more fragmented government with more than one possible coalition and where the various parties could enforce their veto or “blackmail” power. Considering all the possible options in the alliance game, the Labour appear to have more possibilities of nominating a Premier, even if Conservatives should result in the first party. In fact, an alliance with Liberal-Democrats only would hardly be enough for Cameron to ensure an operative majority, since Nick Clegg isn’t expected to repeat its 2010 electoral success. UKIP Populist, anti-Europeanist party is expected to obtain a good result in terms of votes but only a small amount of seats, on the other hands the Liberal Party has already declared that they will not ally with the right wing. Many of them claim that the Scotland is the key to British elections. Projections carried out by various research institutes show that the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) will obtain a large majority (for some the totality of the votes) of the constituency in the north of the Country, at the expense of the Labour party. The failure of the referendum on independence from London held last year could have marked a distance of Scottish voters from politics, but even if the turnout at the polls was not record-breaking as in the referendum, SNP is still expected to win. It’s just a matter of understanding with which percentages. As for now, Labour leader Miliband and Liberal-Democrat Clegg appear to be unwilling to form a coalition with Scottish nationalists, that could demand important ministries and an even strong autonomy on their territory, but involving Edinburgh could be the only way to create a government on solid numerical grounds. The alternative could be the formation of a minority government with the external support or the abstention of the Scots. It would be a very unstable situation that would probably lead to new elections before the established end of term in office.
