Foreign Perspectives

The shifting voting in England (which passed by the rest of the UK) and assorted issues at the polling stations have left everyone with the feeling that they’ve been living through the nightmare that is a third world style election.

Already we have seen the queues of people lining up outside polling stations and being denied their right to vote. Or rather, denied their right or being granted it depending on the whim of the senior election official in the polling station in question. Some allowed everyone in the queue in, then closed the doors and worked their way through those inside even running after the official closing time. Others went to the other extreme and closed the voting boxes at the closing time. Let’s not forget that those making these decisions are part-time and very junior officials at best which would make it even more ridiculous if that were possible. However, those errors weren’t confined to the junior ranks as the senior officials were responsible for not ordering enough voting forms thus a number of polling stations simply ran out and thus voting stopped at that point regardless of the time. Let’s not forget that there wasn’t a massive turnout so this was a very serious error and one that makes it clear that in fact not everyone really has the ability to vote: a 100% turnout couldn’t be handled as they don’t print enough voting forms. Finally, there’s even the prospect of a £750 a head compensation payment for those that couldn’t vote which makes me wonder a) where on early the money to pay 40% of the adult population £750 each would come from (about £12 billion in case you were wondering) and b) have those lawyers proposing such a payout even considered the effect on voter turnout next time around? My bet is that should that £12 billion get paid out, voter turnout next time would be close to zero.

Now we have moved even more into the third world style as the resident dictator (ie Gordon Brown) refuses to give up power regardless of the result of the election whilst the electoral mandate of the majority coalition is, for the moment, ignored. To be fair, it would be something of a problem if he were to step down before there were some obvious successor but it does have a very third world feel to it.

Had there been the posse of international observers present as in “real” third-world elections, they’d be asking some serious questions now… How can it be that polling stations can close when a serious number of people are still queuing outside? How can it be that who gets to vote and who doesn’t in such situations isn’t fully covered by voting rules and is instead at the whim of a junior official? How can it be that a party that has clearly lost can remain in power for an extended period of time?

If this were a third world country, there’d be calls for a rerun of the election and I for one don’t see why that shouldn’t be the case here.

Although it might sound peculiar to outsiders that the Liberal Democrats could possibly think that they could do a deal with either the Conservatives or the Labour party, it makes quite a bit of sense. After all, they’ve spent the last 30 years or so trying to position themselves as the party of the centre so it stands to reason that they’d have something in common with both the other main parties.

At the moment the difference between the two potential contenders is that Gordon Brown (Labour) seems prepared to do anything and everything he can to stay in power regardless of any consequences that there might be later. On the other hand David Cameron seems to have come up with a considered response recognising the areas of common ground whilst not ignoring the areas where there are differences (notably on the timing of debt reduction, on immigration and on voting reform). I suspect in reality we can safely ignore Brown’s pleas from desperation and assume that a coalition will be with the Conservatives.

Of the difficult areas, differences about the timing of debt reduction probably aren’t as big an issue as they might appear. Yes, it’s probably the most important difference but it’s an area where there are so many shades of opinion (and nobody knows the “right” answer) that there’s quite a bit of leeway on the issue if need-be. Immigration was a clear faux-pas on the part of Nick Glegg so it seems likely that any issues on that score would be quietly dropped. Voting reform has for a very long time been the big issue with the Liberals though there’s no really easy answer with it. Their issue is that despite them picking up about 20% of the votes, they generally get about 50 seats and not the 120 or so that 20% equates to. However, to get that 120 the country would need to move to an entirely part-based, national proportional representation system which would have an entirely uncertain outcome and potentially mean that elections counts could take several weeks to produce a result and totally remove the link between a particular MP and their constituency. Thus, a non-national system would be used and that’s unlikely to fully reflect that 20% of votes in terms of seats won. There are so many issues to consider in this that the commission on offer seems the best way to go although in reality it’s quite likely to stay “it’s working fairy well, let’s not try to fix it”.

What about cabinet seats? I could easily see a Liberal Minster for Education, a Liberal Minister for the Environment and perhaps even a Liberal Minister for Health (although that’s a big ministry so they’d likely need to work up to that).

Assuming that’s a runner in some form, it would even be easy to foresee the potential for a more long-term alliance between the two parties although that’s something for four or five years from now.

There are always recounts in elections: getting a count 100% right when there’s only a difference of a dozen or two in a total of 20,000 or more isn’t easy. Some constituencies are already through their second recount and looking at a third later this morning.

More interestingly this time around is the large number of people denied the right to exercise their vote due to the long queues at some polling stations.

Add those two together as has happened in some places and you’ve a sure recipe for legal challenges and potential reruns of those votes which ain’t good given the potential for changing the overall result of the election when it’s this close.

Perhaps it would be better to throw away this result and go for a rerun of the whole thing?

As I write this it looks like the Conservatives will finish up with around 309 seats ie around 16 or 17 short of an overall majority.

As always in times like this, the Liberal Democrats are likely to be courted by Labour (less likely with the Conservatives) although even that would only bring them up to around 315, more than the Conservatives but not a majority government. To get that critical majority they’d need to bring on board at least one other party.

The last Lib/Lab coalition doesn’t bode well for another one this time around. Just as with the last time the UK finances aren’t in good shape and that coalition managed to run the country into the ground, finishing up with power cuts, widespread strikes and bankruptcy of the country. Still, at least it was followed by a massive victory for the Conservatives who tidied the mess up, but do we really need that painful period yet again?

Barring an unexpected swing in the remaining results it seems likely that we’re in for a week or more of horse trading before Brown admits defeat and leaves. Or, at least that’s what should happen: in reality he’ll probably try to hang on regardless and do whatever it takes to allow him to do that which doesn’t bode well for the UK.

The big problem with exit polls is that it’s just not possible for them to take a view on how likely it is for the respondents to be telling the truth.

Thus, as it stands right now the exit polls are predicting a 5% or so swing whereas the actual results are looking more like a 10% swing. Will that descrepancy be maintained throughout the night? Chances are that it will as there’s still a tendency to consider voting Labour to be trendy albeit probably not quite so significant as it was a few years back when there was quite a dramatic different in the predictions from the reality.

I suspect that, once again, the exit polls will be seen as being wildly out of whack with reality.