Tag Archives: United Kingdom

UK and French Election Results

By tmess2 | Published July 14, 2024

Now that the elections in the United Kingdom and France are over, what were the results and what do they mean for the U.S. and our elections.

Starting with the U.K., there were three basic story lines.  First, across all three parts of Britain, the Conservatives had a significant decline (around 20% of the vote).  Most of this vote went to the far-right Reform Party which gained 12%.  The remaining 8% probably went to Labour and the Liberal Democrats but, for the most part, these two parties shed some of their vote to the Greens and independents with Labour netting a gain of around 1.6% of the vote and the Liberal Democrats netting a gain of around 0.7%.  Because the U.K. uses a first past-the-post system, Labour won a lot of seats in which they had been the number two party and the Liberal Democrats won a lot of seats in which they had been the number two party.  Taking 12% of the vote away from the Conservatives only translated into a handful of seats for Reform.  But the Conservatives slightly outperformed their last poll numbers and, unlike what the polls suggested, Labour did not pick up a lot of votes over their 2019 performance.  And the effect of that was that Conservatives avoided the complete disaster that some of the poll numbers suggested might happened and merely had an almost complete disaster (fewest seats ever).

Second, the politics of Scotland are and were different than the politics of England and Wales.  In Scotland, there is an overwhelming left of center majority.  For the past three U.K. elections, most supporters of Scottish independence (around 45% of the total vote) supported the Scottish Nationalist Party.  But the SNP, which is the largest party in the Scottish Parliament, has recently had problems.  As such, there was a massive shift in votes from the SNP to Labour.  Just as the Conservatives were typically one of the top two parties in most seats in England and Wales, the SNP was typically one of the top two parties in Scotland.  Just like in the rest of the U.K,, Labour picked up a lot of seats in Scotland in which they were the number two party and the Liberal Democrats picked up some seats in which they had been the number.  For the Conservatives, the mutual collapse of both the SNP and Conservatives meant that the Conservatives kept most of their seats in Scotland (only losing one to the SNP) as neither Labour nor the Liberal Democrats were close enough in those seats to pick up the scraps. Continue Reading...

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United Kingdom election

By tmess2 | Published July 4, 2024

We in the U.S. probably pay much more attention to the United Kingdom than it merits.  The advantage of having a mostly shared language, the British Broadcasting Corporation being one of the premier news organizations, the cultural ties , and the history of U.S. news companies basing their foreign desk in London means that it Americans get a lot of international news out of the United Kingdom and much less from other countries.

Today, the United Kingdom will cast ballots to elect a new House of Commons.  As the name suggests, the House of Lords is not a fully-democratic body (although recent changes have created an electoral process in which only some of the hereditary nobility hold seats in the House of Lords with the heredity nobility choosing who gets to fill those seats).    And membership in the House of Lords is for life (except those, like the bishops of the Church of England, who hold a seat by virtue of their office).  So the election is only for the House of Commons.  But in the U.K.’s current political system, almost all of the power rests with the House of Commons.  The House of Lords has the right to propose amendments to legislation passed by the Commons, but, ultimately, the Lords are expected to go along with whatever the Commons ultimately passes after the back and forth over amendments.

The House of Commons is composed of 650 members.  Like in the U.S., the seats are distributed to the different regions of the country based on population.  The rules are not quite as strict as in the U.S. in terms of the permitted variation, and there are some remote districts which are “protected” by law, but the general principle of “one person, one vote” remains.  The district lines, since the 1940s, are drawn by nonpartisan boundary commissions (one for each of the four “nations” — England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales — which comprise the United Kingdom.)  As such, the first step in drawing the lines is determining how many seats each nation gets (and within England, the seats are further allocated by region).  The process is somewhat drawn out with multiple rounds of maps being published and the public getting to comment on it.  While the review starts every eight years, it has to be completed before the next election or the process stars over after the next election.  As a result, this election features the first new maps since the 2010 election.  In discussing the likely swing in this election, you have three different baselines: 1) the number of seats actually held at the end of parliament; 2) the number of seats won in 2019 (as there are usually multiple vacancies during the five-year term of a parliament with the by-elections — what we could call special elections — having a different result than the last general election and sometimes members change parties); and 3) “notional” seats (a guess at what the results would have been in 2019 under the new lines). Continue Reading...

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International Elections — Round 2

By tmess2 | Published June 30, 2024

Earlier this month, I posted about international elections — specifically India, South Africa, and the U.K.  At that time, I overlooked two elections, and one of those two elections has triggered another election which is taking place today.

So we start with the elections for the European Parliament.  It is easy to overlook the elections for the European Parliament.  There are no truly Europe-wide parties.  Instead, the national parties align themselves into blocks in the European Parliament with block membership being somewhat fluid.  More importantly, many of the major decisions are made by the Council of Ministers (i.e. the representatives of the national government) with a consensus required for action.  As a result, the election tends to produce a large protest vote against the individual national governments with the opposition parties doing well with voters not paying much attention to the issues that Parliament does have to decide.  More significantly, none of the blocks has anything close to a majority of seats. There were weird country-specific shuffles with unaffiliated members now being the second largest group in the European Parliament behind a block that is generally center-right.

However, the main impact of the election was in France.  Heading into the election the two of the largest parties in France were tied.  However, there was a big swing between the (minority) government center-left party and the ultra-nationalist party which ended up with over 35% of the French seats.  Which moves us to the new election. Continue Reading...

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UK Local Elections

By tmess2 | Published May 1, 2024

This week (Thursday, May 2) are the local elections in the UK.  While city councils (and the functional equivalent for areas outside of the cities) have some powers, the primacy of the UK parliament (especially in England) often leads the vote for council members to be a way to express disapproval of the current government.  While some share of that “protest” vote comes from some otherwise loyal supporters of the governing party who will return to the fold for the next general election, the results in the council vote is often seen as a referendum on the current government.

The vote this year is particularly significant.  In the U.K., the national parliament is elected for a term of up to five years.  While for a period of time, the U.K. flirted with having a fixed term similar to Congress, the “fixed term” law allowed for parliament to agree to an early election.  In practice, it was impossible for the opposition to vote against an early election although the opposition could, to a limited extent, get some input on the date of the election.  So the U.K. went back to the old law which allows the government to call an early election.  We are now nearing the end of the current parliament’s term.  The last election in the U.K. was in December 2019.  In theory, the government could wait until the term ends to call the next election (which would then fall at the end of January 2025), but that would have the election period run through the holidays which would cause havoc with some of the deadlines related to the election.  As such, the expectation is the government will schedule the parliamentary elections in the early fall.

Generally speaking, council terms in England are for four years.  City councils fall into three basic types.  Some councils elect the full council every four years.  Some councils elect half their membership every other year.  And some councils have a four-year cycle in which they elect one-third of their members every year (with a fourth “off-year” in which no members were elected.  But vacancies can require special elections as part of the council elections to fill vacancies and boundary changes can require the full council to stand under the new ward lines even if the council election is normally for one-third of the council. Continue Reading...

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International Issues

By tmess2 | Published September 18, 2022

Historically, domestic issues have always mattered more than foreign relations.  But the willful ignorance of the rest of the world leads to a misleading view of domestic issues.  So three topics worthy of a closer look.

First, for the last week the pomp of the United Kingdom has been on display with the ceremonies connected with the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the succession of King Charles III.  We simply do not do pomp in this country that well.  What can’t be denied is that pomp has a role to play.  The formalities of politics emphasize continuity and the orderly rules of succession.  If you have ever watched coverage of a British general election, there is a whole formal ceremony connected with the declaration of the vote in each district.  And, at least for the early results (until they expand from a trickle to a flood), many of the declarations get live coverage.  By contrast, in the U.S., the media “declare” a winner long before the count becomes official, and the official declaration of the vote is simply a vote by a canvassing board covering multiple races and some signatures on the official documents with little or no public fanfare.  This low-key approach has, as we have seen, the consequence of depriving the final result of some of the finality and officialness which would make it harder to challenge.

Second, we are now dealing with a global economy.  National (and state and local) governments can impact things around the margin.  But we lack any recognizes statistics for measuring how well or poorly a particular country is doing.  How many Americans know that the United Kingdom with a Conservative government is looking at double digit inflation while the U.S. is doing about 5% better.  The reality is that so much of what is produced and consumed in this country (even if it stays entirely in the U.S.) is part of a global market.  The oil produced by U.S. wells may be refined in U.S. facilities and then sold at U.S. gas stations, but that is all done by private companies which only do so to the extent that they can make more money in the U.S. than in Mexico or Japan or Germany.  So if prices are going up in Germany, Americans will have to pay more if we want to keep the gas in the U.S.  Likewise, it is hard to have a growing economy if the rest of the world is in a recession and nobody abroad can buy the extra goods that you are producing.  But there is no official number for global inflation (pegged to value in the same currency) or global economic growth.  Thus, it takes a lot more effort than most voters are going to do to find out if the current government is doing as best a job as can be done to weather hard times in the global economy or is doing a lousy job to maximize gains when the global economy is doing well. Continue Reading...

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The News from London

By tmess2 | Published July 12, 2022

The U.S. system is somewhat unique in that we have regularly scheduled elections with a regularly scheduled process for choosing candidates, mostly by means of elections open to most voters.  Other countries do things differently.  Many countries are parliamentary systems with the Prime Minister being a hybrid of the U.S. President (in terms of power), the U.S. Speaker of the House (in terms of being officially chosen by the whole House and removable by the whole House), and Majority Leader of the Senate (in terms of being removable by the majority of the majority party).

In recent weeks, the Trumpish Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, has been bogged down by scandals.  Last week, the heat got too high for many members of the Conservative Party, and an open revolt forced Boris Johnson to agree to resign.  Under the British system, this means that the Conservative Party has to choose a new leader who will then become Prime Minister.

There are no formal rules for this type of leadership election and, when this situation occurs, it falls to the Conservatives in Parliament to draft the rules that will apply to this election.  This time, they have chosen a rather expedited process.  The rules were announced just yesterday. Continue Reading...

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International Politics — May 2021 Edition

By tmess2 | Published May 4, 2021

This week will see two developments in our allies.

First, in Israel, we are still in the post-election negotiation phase.  Because the U.S. has an entrenched two-party system, we rarely see this type of negotiation phase (although we saw something of it in the Senate this cycle).  Israel uses a proportional representation system with a relatively low threshold.  And that means that you have a lot of smaller parties with a handful of seats that have to be meshed together into a coalition.  Over the past three years, there have been four elections with no conclusive results.  Part of the reason for the lack of a conclusive result is that Arabs within the borders of Israel form a significant part of the vote (around 8-10%).  There are certain parties that appeal only to the “Arab vote” and the rest of the parties really only seek the “Jewish vote.”  And the Arab parties are unwilling to form a coalition with the Jewish parties and vice versa.  The result is that a coalition needs 61 out of approximately 110 seats rather than 61 out of 120 seats.  Under the Israeli system, shortly after the election, the President gives a mandate to one of the party leaders to attempt to form a coalition.  That mandate lasts thirty days (but the President can give a second chance if the President believes that the additional time will be useful).  After the last election, Prime Minister/accused criminal Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party had the most seats, and the President gave Netanyahu the first shot at forming the coalition.  Netanyahu’s thirty days ends this week.  It does not look like he will get an extension.  The major opposition parties appear unwilling to form a unity government this time.  (The attempt at a unity government after the previous election quickly fell apart forcing a new election.)  The issue is whether we will be looking at election number five or the President will give the opposition a chance.

Second, in the United Kingdom, we will have local elections on Thursday.  There are two things going on.  In England, local elections occur in May.  While local governments have some powers, a strong recurring theme of local elections is a chance to punish the central government over dissatisfaction with the government.  The governing party typically loses local council seats in the May elections.  In Wales and Scotland, this May is election for their assembly/parliaments. Continue Reading...

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International Politics — Trump Ally 1 and Trump Ally 2

By tmess2 | Published December 12, 2019

While folks in D.C. are preparing articles of impeachment, there is election news regarding two of Trumps favorite elected politicians — Bibi Netanyahu and Boris Johnson.

Bibi, like Trump, has been facing investigation for criminal misconduct.  And because Israel permits charges to be filed against a prime minister, he is now actually facing charges.  Meanwhile, Israeli politics are a royal mess.  When there are two or three really strong parties that get most of the votes, proportional representation (or similar systems like the mixed-member system in Germany) can work.  The small parties get to get minor concessions from the major parties, but one of the major parties is typically in a strong enough position to turn to other coalition partners if a potential ally asks for too much.  In Israel, the main parties are simply not strong enough.  Netanyahu’s Likud is only getting around 25% of the vote, leaving them well short of a majority in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament).  And the Labour Party has essentially collapsed leaving centrist politicians to emerge one after the other as the alternative to Likud in new parties that bubble up and then collapse from cycle to cycle.  This past year, that alternative has been the “Blue and White” Party.  But the Blue and White Party has also only gotten around 25% of the vote.  And the remaining parties are too fractured to get enough of them together.  The remaining 50% of the vote is almost split evenly between the religious parties (who want special favors for the ultra-Orthodox), the remnants of Labour and its allies (who want some generally progressive secular government), the right-of-center secular nationalists (who want to repeal the existing special rights of the ultra-Orthodox), and the Arab parties.  This roughly even split means that the natural allies of Likud and Blue and White stood at around 50-52 seats each after the last election.  The secular nationalists could theoretically put either side over the top, but they refuse to sit in a coalition with either the religious parties or the Arab parties (essentially requiring a national unity government as a condition for joining a coalition).

In the April 2019 elections, Likud and Blue and White won 35 seats each (out of 120).  The religious parties combined for 21 seats, leaving a potential Likud-led coalition at 56 seats.  On the other hand, Labour and other progressive parties won a total of 14 seats, leaving a potential Blue and White coalition at 49 seats.  The remaining 15 seats were split between the Arab parties (10 seats) and the secular nationalists (5 seats), meaning that the only way to get to 61 outside of a national unity government would be for the secular nationalist to enter a coalition that either expressly included the religious parties (and the two groups had conflicting demands) or had the implicit support of the Arab parties.  Since neither alternative was acceptable, no government could be formed and we had a second round of elections in September. Continue Reading...

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International Elections — Summer and Fall 2019

By tmess2 | Published August 10, 2019

With Congress out until Moscow Mitch deigns to call the Senate back to endless debate gun control legislation before ultimately passing the most minimal bill that the Republicans think they can get away with, it’s a good opportunity to talk about the politics of our allies.

The biggest one for domestic politics is probably the Israeli election.  A mere four months ago, Israel went to the polls and Benjamin Netanyahu eked out a narrow victory.  However, given that Israel uses proportional representation, coming in first is not enough to be prime minister.  And many of the groups that would naturally support a Netanyahu government have conflicting non-negotiable demands.  (The big dispute on the Israeli right is between secular and religious parties.  Current Israeli law exempts religious students from the draft.  The religious parties want to keep this exemption.  The secular parties want to repeal this exemption.)  Because he could not put together a majority behind a unified agenda, Israel is going to have a second election on September 17.  Again, like our own President, Netanyahu has to face allegations of improprieties and could likely be facing criminal charges if he loses.  One of the interesting factors in Israeli politics is the use of joint lists in which various parties agree to run as one list to assure meeting the threshold for winning seats (and to maximize the seats won) with internal agreements based on estimated support determining how any seats won are allocated between the parties.  Not much has changed since April so another narrow Netanyahu win is the most likely result.

In Europe, there are a lot of elections set for the smaller economies — Portugal, Poland, Austria, Croatia — but the big question is the United Kingdom.  After the recent Conservative Party elections, Boris Johnson is serving as Prime Minister, but when Parliament returns from the summer recess the Conservatives and their allies from Northern Ireland will have a 320-319 majority.  However, the United Kingdom is currently scheduled to leave the European Union on Halloween.  Boris Johnson is the new Prime Minister because Theresa May could not negotiate a deal for the departure that could obtain the consent of Parliament.  While Johnson is trying to negotiate a new deal, the European Union is not willing to negotiate against itself.  It made concessions in the negotiations with Ms. May and is not willing to agree to move the goalposts (especially as the main problem is the Ireland-Northern Ireland border).  There is a solid bloc of the Conservative Party that is opposed to departing without a deal which could lead to Mr. Johnson losing a “no confidence” vote when Parliament reconvenes.  If there is not a consensus alternative to lead a “national unity”government, early elections (but no sooner than October 31) are likely.  Given that the predominant issue in the UK remains the relation between the UK and the European Union (and that the UK is split down the middle on this issue) and the use of a first-past-the-post system (which means the fact that there are multiple parties on both sides of the divide can lead to weird results in individual constituencies). Continue Reading...

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Choosing a Prime Minister — UK Style

By tmess2 | Published June 9, 2019

While we are looking forward to the first Democratic Debates later this month, the “official” start of the 2020 nomination process — which will not end until 13 months later at the Democratic National Convention — the United Kingdom is looking at a rather different process for choosing its next prime minister.  Technically, the United Kingdom does not have elections for prime minister.  Instead, the United Kingdom (and most western democracies) have elections for party leadership.  The prime minister is technically chosen by the Queen (or, in many other commonwealth countries, by the Governor-General — the official representative of the Queen for that country — or in other monarchies by that country’s king or queen or republics, like Germany, Israel, Greece, and Italy, by the president).  However, the tradition is that the leader of the majority party is selected as prime minister or — if no party individually has a majority — the person chosen as prime minister by the coalition that has a majority or — if no party or coalition has a majority — by the leader of the largest grouping in the legislature.

Those elections for party leadership can occur at any time.  Often, an election will occur shortly after a general election with the losing parties looking for new leadership for the next election.  However, in the middle of parliament, even the winning party can look at the tea leaves for the next election and decide that the best strategy for winning the next election is to kick out the person who seems to be leading the party to sure defeat. 

One of the things that makes the United Kingdom (or Canada or Australia) interesting is that in a paraphrase of the old saw, we are two countries united by a shared but diverging history.  At the time of the American Revolution, the United Kingdom was in the middle of a long evolution from a strong monarchy with a parliamentary check in the 1500s to the supremacy of the House of Commons by 1850.  And, in the 1770, there were flaws in the selection and composition of the House of Commons.  Coming from that shared point, the United States and the commonwealth countries have taken entirely different approaches to selecting a party leader. Continue Reading...

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