All Info About

In just nine days, here in Britain we will be going to the polls to vote for a new government.

As General Elections go, this one has been fairly boring apart from the introduction of leaders’ debates. Because we’re a parliamentary democracy and we vote for individual Members of Parliament to represent our district not the Prime Minister, debates between leaders of the main parties has always been resisted.

In the run-up to this election, though, we’ve had two televised leaders’ debates featuring Prime Minister George Brown for Labour, David Cameron for the Conservatives and Nick Clegg for the LibDems. Undoubtedly, the dark horse Nick Clegg won the first debate but the winner of the second was much harder to call. All I can say is that none of the three did badly.

We have the final leaders’ debate this coming Thursday and I would be surprised if the three men are not much more aggressive than in the last two. The opinion polls show there is all to play for and that Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats could hold the balance of power if there is a hung Parliament, ie neither Labour nor Conservative have enough Members of Parliament to form a majority government but need an agreement of support with the LibDems and the smaller parties.

Judging by Twitter, other social networks and opinion polls, it seems that a hung Parliament is the preferred option for many people. Of course, the two major parties phophesize doom and gloom if this is the result but they would, wouldn’t they?

Well, in a little over a week we will know the result. Will it be more of George Brown or will we get Conservative David Cameron as Prime Minister? If the Conservatives win, it will be interesting to see if they manage to pull together a consistent set of policies – something they have failed to do so far, in my opinion.

If it is a hung Parliament and LibDem Nick Clegg has to make the choice of which of the two major parties he will support, can he really get LibDems to support a Conservative government? Considering they are on the liberal end of the political spectrum, it seems unlikely.

We certainly live in interesting times.

Picture above: Copyright © Nick Clegg, Creative Commons Licence

Tags: britain, Conservatives, David Cameron, general election, Hung parliament, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Majority government, Nick Clegg, Politics, Prime minister, uk

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 at 1:23 pm and is filed under Featured, Headline, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.