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As polls close across the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party under David Cameron stands to win a plurality of seats in the House of Commons. The center-left Labor Party, under Gordon Brown, stands to take a hit in the polls due to public outrage over the government's handling of the global economic recession. A third variable in the equation is the center-left Liberal Democrats, who have surged since the debates and will undoubtedly become a swing vote in the hung parliament that most pundits expect. The UK election, though much different than our own midterm elections, can give us some insight into the current political problems facing the Democratic Party (US).
The Democrats and Labor are in similar situations. Both are center-left parties that have come to power recently after a string of bad decisions by the center-right party. Both of them held majorities during the economic crisis and therefore had to make a lot of tough decisions that apparently did nothing to improve the economy. Let me clarify that though the Democrats did not control the presidency during the crash, they controlled both branches of the legislature and later the presidency during the economic fallout that was caused by the crash. The main difference between the parties is that Barack Obama appears to be generally improving the position of the Democrats whereas Gordon Brown appears to be driving discontent with the Labor Party.
What is important is both of these parties stand to take a major hit in their respective elections, likely losing their majorities. It is easy to forget that neither of these parties caused the recession. The Democrats generally opposed recent efforts to deregulate the financial markets and the Labor Party had little to do with it as the problem originated in America. Pundits have been talking about polls that show something like 60% of Americans would vote out their incumbent representative or senator. In most of these cases, the incumbent will be a Democrat. It is not clear, however, that most of these independent minded Americans want to vote Republican either. Last time I checked, the Republican Party's favorability rating stood at 22% whereas the Democratic Party stood at 38%. A similar trend is happing in the UK. Many people don't want Labor, but they also don't want to vote Conservative. Conservative is the lesser of two evils in their eyes. But the funny thing about a parliamentary system is there aren't only two choices. Enter Liberal Democrats.
The Lib Democrats generally follow similar policies to Labor, though they favor a free market economy and other centrist measures. Generally speaking, if support is shifting from Labor to Liberal Democrats, it isn't the policies that are drawing support from Labor. This is most likely true in America. People want to blame someone for the harsh economic conditions, so they blame the ruling party. They don't, however, want their lifeline cut by a center-right party so they are confused. The bottom line is that if there was a strong third party in America, they would be surging right now. We would likely be better off because of it.
Some of the things you have on here are just plain wrong. Labour, in particular, is not a recently elected party that is being held accountable for Conservative sins - it is paying for its mistakes during the past 13 years its been in office. In particular, Labour inherited a healthy economy and relatively mild deficit from the Tories, did well for one term, then went on a spending binge that resulted in a massive deficit even before the financial crisis hit. Also, Brown did play
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, the cris did not just "originate in America". It had alot to do with the City of London (and Canary Wharf) as well - Northern Rock, a small British bank, collapsed and was bailed out well, well before the Financial crisis hit the US.
So, no. Brown should not be given credit for getting out of a hole that he dug in the first place. He is not, as you assert, merely a victim of some idiotic Tory measures. He played a part in it himself, and therefore he has to go, which he did yesterday. While situations are improving gradually, the UK recovery isn't going as well as the US recovery because of the overreliance on financial services, and the sluggish growth of the UK's main trading partners in Europe.
And I resent the Lib-Dems being called "Center-Left". While Lib Dems have some policies that are broadly similar to labour, there are many fundamental disagreements between the two . Labour, even NuLabour after Blair's reforms, is still fundamentally a top-down, Whitehall says this, Whitehall says that party, while the Lib Dems, with their roots in the Liberal tradition, are much more of a bottom-up system. Take Education for example, NuLabour favours standards, and the Department of Education running through centrally, while Lib Dems prefer reducing class sizes, bringing in local accountability, with more flexible curriculae, and less national standardized tests. The same is repeated for Crime, Health, etc.
The Lib Dem surge also in the end, did not appear - the share of the vote is barely up from the last election, and there has actaully been a net loss of 5 seats.
The reason why there has been no strong 3rd party emerging in the US is because of the skeweed electoral system, and because of the general political direction of the US. FPTP is a horrible, horrible, horrible system, and unless a 3rd party manages a sweeping breakthrough in its 1st or 2nd elections, it will heavily favour the incumbent parties. Then, there is the fact that the US is itself right-of-center, with the Democrats holding a braodly similar position to the Conservatives in the UK, though slightly less free-market oriented. This leaves very little wiggle room for any new 3rd party to emerge, especially since both the Republicans and Democrats are, in a sense, broad coalitions with a significant overlap in the middle.