As it has been rumored, the UK election results have resulted in a hung parliament. . The last time a General Election resulted in a hung parliament, it took 8 months and a special election to fix. I’ll be giving a free brush up on what the terms mean, so you won’t have to give me any instant payday loans to do so. (But if you want to, I won’t stop you.)
Hung Parliament and also the UK election
The UK election results are that no party has an absolute majority, and there is therefore a hung parliament. That means that unless something is done about it, the Parliament of Great Britain won’t be able to do anything. Oh, and it may bear mention that means they can’t, in essence, pick a Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasurer), or other things. In essence, the government of Great Britain becomes powerless in the event of a hung parliament.
That means welcome to Comparative World Governments
In short, whichever party wins the most seats in UK elections gets to form the government (Prime Minister and so forth). If they do not have an absolute majority, that means they won’t be able to get much done, regardless of how many seats that party holds. If that happens, like it has now, the winning party can make an effort to make it work with a minority government (that rarely works) a coalition government by making strategic agreements, or just have a new election.
So what happened?
The 2010 UK General Election saw the Conservative Party, headed by David Cameron, win a lot more seats than the incumbent Prime Minister, Gordon Brown’s party, Labor. Conservative Party candidates won 36.1 percent of the seats, and Labor took 29.3 percent. The Liberal Democrats, headed by Nick Clegg, won almost 23 percent. Though the Conservative Party holds more seats than the others, they both out number Conservative seats, so no absolute majority exists.
What happens now?
Conservative leader David Cameron is offering to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, according to The Guardian. There is no British government to replace the incumbent one yet, but it is a work in progress.
Resources for the article
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/07/general-election-2010-cameron-liberal-democrat-coalition
