Hung Parliament 2010

The British elections of 2010 resulted in a hung parliament with no single party winning enough MPs to command a parliamentary majority.

The results of the election (courtesy BBC) were as follows:
Conservative/Tory: 36%, 306 seats
Labour: 29%, 258 seats
Liberal Democrat: 23%, 57 seats
Others (Nationalists, Unionists, Green): 12%, 28 seats.

There followed a period of intense debate between the Tories and Liberals, and some discussion between Labour and Liberals, over who might form the next government. The result of these talks was the formation of a coalition Tory-Liberal government.

Despite fighting the election against the backdrop of a global financial crisis, and a scandal of MPs of all parties abusing the expense system, sitting Prime Minister Gordon Brown performed very much better than expected, and very much better than many previous Labour leaders, in preventing an outright Tory victory. However, once the coalition agreement was announced Mr Brown resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party thus allowing David Cameron to take over as Prime Minister, and triggering a contest to elect a new Labour leader.

While this blog firmly believes coalitions can and do produce good government, as witnessed by many democracies around the globe, it also considers that to be effective coalition partners must share values to a significant degree. However, the Tory-Liberal coalition is an unnatural alliance between two diametrically different philosophies. It is our view that this marriage of convenience (rather than love) will fall apart acrimoniously sooner rather than later, and the purpose of this blog is to document the process for posterity.

Though the editor considers himself philosophically left-leaning, this blog is non-partisan. Indeed the editor remains a fierce critic of former Labour PM Tony Blair's militarism. As such we will be only too happy to praise the coalition when we it behaves positively.