As it has been rumored, the UK election results have resulted in a hung parliament. . The last hung parliament from a General Election was in 1974, and it took 8 months to fix. Some people are likely confused as to what that means, so we’ll go ahead and brush up on our Poli-Sci, and also you won’t have to give me any instant loans for doing this. (You can if you want to though.)
The UK election elects a hung parliament
The UK election results are that no party has an absolute majority, and there is therefore a hung parliament. What that means is that unless certain things happen, the Parliament of Great Britain won’t be able to effectively do anything. That means they can’t pick a Prime Minister or do anything else. A hung parliament is a hamstrung government in Great Britain.
Welcome to Comparative World Governments 101
The short version is whichever party wins probably the most seats in a UK election picks a government, like the Prime Minister and so on. 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. When that happens, there can be either a minority government (trying to make it work anyway, which rarely works) a coalition government by making agreements with an additional party, or have one more election.
So what happened?
The 2010 UK General Election saw numerous seats that used to belong to the Labor Party, headed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, lose to the Conservative Party, headed by David Cameron. Labor dropped to 29.3% of Parliament seats, and Conservative boosted their stake to 36.1% of the seats. Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats bagged almost 23% of the seats. Though the Conservative Party holds more seats than the others, they both out number Conservative seats, so no absolute majority exists.
So what is the end to this beginning?
According to The Guardian, Conservative Leader David Cameron has reached out to Nick Clegg and also the Liberal Democrats to form a coalition government. There is no British government to replace the incumbent one yet, but it’s a work in progress.
Sources for the article
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/07/general-election-2010-cameron-liberal-democrat-coalition
