英文讀書會

A briefing on the British election
Who speaks for Britain?

THIS time next month, a government may have fallen, and New Labour gone to its rest alongside Thatcherism. But the mood in 2010 is very different from the buzzing eagerness of 1997, when the Labour Party swept the Conservatives from power. This time the polls are close; party positions are far less distinct than party rhetoric; many voters are undecided; and a big chunk of them are more apprehensive about the future than elated by it.

Five years ago Labour won an unprecedented third consecutive victory. Five months ago it looked as if that would have to be the limit of its ambition. Labour seemed tired and divided, its leader, Gordon Brown, ham-fisted and hated. The Tories, redeemed from political Siberia by a fresh-faced centrist, David Cameron, were streets ahead in polling, and had only to hold on to win.

But things moved on. The prime minister, bloodied but unbudgeable, urged voters to “take a second look at Labour” and “a long, hard look” at the Conservatives. They did. And decided they either didn’t know what the Tories stood for or didn’t like it. By the end of March a hung parliament, in which no party enjoys an overall majority, seemed a plausible outcome.

The background to all this is one of wrenching change and uncertainty, on several fronts. For a decade and a half Britain enjoyed solid growth. The City of London was the world’s biggest international financial centre. Jobs grew on trees. Heavy spending on public services pulled up their quality a fair bit. Most Britons grew more tolerant of diversity (or maybe more indifferent to it). And there was a certain swagger on the world stage. Mr Brown, chancellor of the exchequer for ten years, preached the virtues of Anglo-Saxon capitalism to benighted folk in other lands. As prime minister, Tony Blair intervened militarily hither and yon.

So the shock was considerable when, in 2008, Britain slid into its worst recession since the 1930s, taking longer than other big countries to crawl out. Banks needed handouts. Factories closed. Now prospects for growth are wan and the budget deficit eye-wateringly large. Spending will be cut back and taxes are already rising. People are frightened about their economic future, and their children’s.

That increases unease in another area: social cohesion and behaviour. Britain has just undergone its biggest wave of immigration in history. Race relations were already mixed when Islamist attacks in London in July 2005 threw them into the headlines. Other questions were raised by the influx of workers from central and eastern Europe, such as what Britain’s own working class was for. And while new people were arriving, old problems were disappearing only slowly, including binge-drinking, crude, rude young people and dysfunctional families. As opportunities evaporate, anxiety about identity and entitlement seems to be sharpening.

The third big shock has to do with foreign policy and defence. As it limps away from the war in Iraq and struggles with the cost, in money and lives, of another in Afghanistan, Britain is re-evaluating its place in the world. Not for the first time, it faces the prospect of relegation from the Premier League of nations with worldwide influence. This time a long, strong fiscal squeeze will make it hard to spend as much on diplomacy, defence and foreign aid as keeping a top spot requires.

So this election matters more than many. The central choice is, as usual, between the two main parties, Labour and Conservative. But with the polls close, the Liberal Democrats are in the spotlight too. And in a very tight election any of the parties in the devolved bits of the United Kingdom—the Scottish National Party, the Welsh Plaid Cymru and four Northern Ireland parties—could also hold the balance of power.

The issues most on voters’ minds as they head to the polls are the economy, health and education, immigration, and law and order, according to Ipsos MORI, a polling firm that tracks these things. Policy differences are not always clear-cut (though party manifestos due out soon will seek to make them so). Austerity is on the way whoever wins, though both the Tories and the Lib Dems would cut the deficit faster than Labour. No main party has made immigration the strident issue the Tories did (disastrously) in 2005, though it is cropping up more as the election nears. Foreign wars, too, are less divisive this time than last. The biggest foreign-policy gaps are over Europe, with the Lib Dems its loudest cheerleaders and the Tories the most sceptical.

If the debate over economic and fiscal policy is mainly about judgment (when to cut, how much and where), big differences of principle emerge in the argument over education. Recognising that the failure of the school system to equip a great many children for life or work is Britain’s Achilles heel, the Conservatives (and indeed the Lib Dems) want to shake it up with the kind of supply-side reforms that New Labour has given up on.

But this election is in fact less about ideology than it is about values and personalities. The Tories talk of reducing the role of the state and strengthening families; Labour, drifting to the left, laments the persistence of privilege and promises “fairness” in distributing pain or gain. In the end, it may come down to how well the party leaders project competence and empathy, or even whether a televised preference for pancakes or bacon butties echoes the voters’ own. Britain’s parliamentary elections are becoming ever more presidential.

Question:

(1) What's the differencies between the election in UK and U.S. ?

(2) How do you choose your candidate?