UK Goes to the Polls

It’s almost 19:00 in London… 3 hours until polls close and we start to see results from the election.

It seems that the result is a foregone conclusion… the only interesting part will be how many seats Tony Blairs Labour party wins or loses. Another interesting tidbit that I heard on CBC-Radio this morning was what might happen if Blair does lose a chunk of seats in his majority. The majority will of course still be significant, but one commentator made the point that it may actually be more difficult for Blair to pass the legislation he wants because he will have lost what many believe to be the more right-wing MPs in his caucus. Apparently in many instances, legislation has passed with the support of a signficant number of Conservative MPs voting with the Blair government… and an equally significant amount of Labour MPs voting against their party line.

Assuming the number of Labour MPs willing to defy Blairs wishes stays the same, or grows, as polls have shown might be the case, it might actually be harder for Blair to pass legislation without enlisting yet more help from the Conservative and risking alienating the voter base of his own Labour party.

Regardless what happens it should be an interesting night.

On a related note if there are any British visitors out there today, I’d like you to give your opinion on whether you think the UK should consider a form of proportional reprensation to replace the First Past the Post system. On May 17 British Columbia is having a referendum on whether to move in that direction. You can see my post about it here.

2 replies on “UK Goes to the Polls”

  1. I’m guessing that if Blair, after a year or so, finds that he doesn’t have enough support from his own party’s MPs, he will step down.
    Or they will push him down (ala Thatcher). However, I’m no expert on the Britsh political scene but I would guess Blair’s a died-in-the-wool socialist-Labour politician and wants to advance the socialist agends so why would his own party not vote for his proposals? Or is he only quasi-socialist? I confess, I’m uninformed regarding politics in the UK.

  2. Hi think he’s quite similar to Paul Martin. He’s the leader of what we would call a Liberal and you would call a Socialist party :). But over the course of his term he has been seen as moving further to the right in his leadership, especially with his strong support of George Bush.

    This has made him less than popular with a large faction inside his own party… so if they become more prominent then the likelyhood of him losing the next leadership review would increase.

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