by Shaker Cim
Voters have been going to the polls today for the United Kingdom general election. The polls close at 10pm local time, and it looks certain that whatever the result is, the political direction of the UK will be significantly altered. Which way it gets altered, though, is still up in the air. Here's a quick(ish) introduction to the election for people outside the UK.
The parties
Labour are the current majority party, and are approximately centre-left. They have been in power for 13 years, and the accumulated unpopularity of their decisions - and they've made some really bad decisions in that time - means that they are doing very badly in the polls and are likely to lose at least 100 seats and probably significantly more in this election. Most of their support comes from the inner cities and northern industrial towns.
Their main challengers are the Conservative party (aka the Tories), a right-wing party that has been either the majority party or the major opposition party for the last few hundred years. They look to be the best placed to capitalise on Labour's unpopularity, but are struggling somewhat in the polls themselves, probably because a lot of people remember the last time they were in power, which was great for well-off white heteronormative families, and very bad for everyone else. Their support mainly comes from rural constituencies and wealthy suburban areas in the south of England.
The next biggest party is the Liberal Democrats (often abbreviated Lib Dems). They are also centre-left, but in a very different way to Labour, reflecting their liberal roots rather than Labour's socialist roots. Their support is scattered across the country, though they do have a few regional strongholds in the South West and in Scotland, and also do well in some university towns where the mix of vaguely left middle class students and locals benefits them. They look very likely to get significantly bigger this election, though still a definite third.
In Scotland and Wales, the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Plaid Cymru (PC) respectively are local parties for those countries. They have a lot of power within the regional government but not much outside it. There are several regional parties in Northern Ireland, most of which are loosely allied with one of the big three British parties (which do not stand candidates in Northern Ireland). The influence of these parties in the UK government is generally very limited.
There are several other smaller parties and hundreds of independent candidates, but except in a few rare cases mentioned below, they don't stand a chance in most constituencies.
The major issues
The UK is slowly coming out of a recession brought on by the global financial crisis. Labour have taken a lot of blame for getting us into that mess, but also get some credit for getting us out again. The Conservatives want to make huge cuts to public services to balance the government books, whereas Labour and the Lib Dems are both looking more towards tax rises. (Though whoever is in charge, public services will be cut, and taxes will rise).
A lot of MPs were caught cheating on their expenses, and a lot more putting in claims that were technically within the rules but not really within the spirit of them. Many MPs are standing down at this election as a result of this, and a few are being investigated for fraud. As a result there's a general anti-politics sentiment in the country that's a lot stronger than normal, and all parties are proposing ways to restore trust and improve democracy.
None of the main parties have a great record on helping people who fall outside the social default of white heterosexual non-disabled upper-middle-class cis men (or indeed, on selecting candidates who aren't - the Centre for Women and Democracy have an analyis of the numbers of women standing this time). Labour and the Lib Dems generally at least pretend to care but get things very wrong at times and both have a problem with thinking about people generally, rather than in compartmentalised "women's rights" or "disability" issues. The Conservatives are even worse. Here's a quick summary of the votes on LGB rights by the big three parties, here's one on the last big vote on abortion rights (aye is the anti-choice side) - I can't find convenient summaries for voting related to other forms of oppression, but here's some research by the Fawcett Society on "What about Women", and Operation Black Vote have lots of material on the parties and (anti-)racism, for hints about what might happen next.
Immigration has come up as a big issue during the election campaign. All three major parties (and indeed most of the minor parties) promise to take extra steps against undocumented immigrants, and increase the level of control over documented immigrants. The Lib Dems policies are marginally less bad, in that they promise to stop detaining asylum seekers in abusive situations (search for "Yarl's Wood abuse", but *trigger warning* for most of the links you'll find) and propose a one-off amnesty for undocumented immigrants - policies for which they've been heavily criticised by Labour, the Conservatives and the media. Really, though, if you want a party that might actually consider immigrants (documented or not) to be as equally human as citizens, and makes policy accordingly, you're looking for one of the minor left parties. Everyone else is too busy trying to "look tough" to avoid losing votes to the BNP to actually stand up and say "wait, immigrants aren't actually destroying the country".
The BBC have a pretty good list of the parties major policies, and there are a few quizzes to suggest the best parties for you given your opinion on various policies, which might help you get a better impression of where they stand. Here's one.
The election system
The UK is divided by an impartial Boundaries Commission into 650 constituencies or seats, each of which has around 70,000 voters. The results of the latest redrawing are being used for the first time in this election, which means that for a majority of constituencies, "notional results" are being used, where the "last time" vote is estimated from local Council elections.
In each constituency, each of the three main parties puts up a candidate (except for Northern Ireland, which has different parties, and the constitutional oddity of the Speaker's seat). In most constituencies, some of the other parties will also put up a candidate.
Voters then vote for one candidate, and the one with the most votes wins. This is a terrible system for everyone but Labour and the Conservatives, who mostly benefit from it and aren't doing anything to change it. The Lib Dems, naturally, would really prefer it if it was fixed, and polling suggests that most voters would like that too.
Usually after all the votes are counted, one of the big two parties will have a majority of the MPs, become the government, and spend the next few years doing things varying degrees of wrong.
Election night
At 10pm, all the polling stations close (an advantage of having a country small enough to fit in a single time zone) and the votes are taken to be counted. From this point on, exit polls can be released, and TV channels will compete to see who can put together the silliest animation about the election.
The first constituency (usually an urban safe seat where the votes can be collected quickly and where being off by ten or twenty on the final count won't matter) will usually announce the results an hour or so later, with results coming in through the night and into the next morning. Generally the urban constituencies will declare first, with the geographically large rural constituencies declaring later. (A quick description of the counting process).
Constituencies that will be interesting to watch for more than their contribution to the final result (or if you happen to live there) are:
Bethnal Green and Bow. Currently held by the Respect coalition, a loose and uneasy (they've split in half once already) coalition of socialists, Islamists, and George Galloway, this used to be a safe Labour seat and may be their only hope for winning a new seat tonight.
Brighton Pavilion. The leader of the Green party is standing here, and with a bit of luck might become that party's first MP. This is probably the only constituency where the top four candidates are all women.
Barking. Another potential first MP for a party, but hopefully not this time. The far-right and proudly racist British National Party is standing here.
Buckingham. The Speaker of the House of Commons is standing here. For complicated historical reasons, the Speaker is an MP, but is politically neutral, but used to be an MP for a party (in his case, the Conservatives). It's messy and complicated. Recently invented convention states that none of the big parties stand against the speaker. The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) are not big and are trying for their own first seat here. Again, hopefully they won't get it, because they're barely an improvement on the BNP.
Bedfordshire Mid. This seat is held by Nadine Dorries, one of the least moderate Conservatives, and there's a strong campaign to defeat her. It probably won't work.
By UK tradition, no interesting election events are allowed to happen in constituencies that do not begin with 'B'.
Well, okay. Morley and Outwood has been heavily targeted by the Conservatives. It'd usually be pretty safe, but they want to get Ed Balls, one of Labour's ministers, out of government, as pay-back for the defeat of Michael Portillo in Labour's overwhelming victory in 1997.
In Wyre Forest, one of the UK's few independent MPs is trying to retain their seat.
York Outer is not particularly interesting for its candidates (though if you happened to live there, it's close between the Conservatives and Lib Dems), but for its shape. It's the only doughnut-shaped constituency in the country.
Once all the results are in, things get really tricky. Assuming the current polls are accurate, there are basically two likely results. As you can guess from the headings, I'm not optimistic about this election.
Simple but bad
The Conservatives might get a majority of the MPs. It's looking unlikely on the current polling, unless they do very well in the crucial constituencies, but if it happens then they get to be the government and we can look forwards to at least four or five years of right-wing policies. David Cameron is relatively moderate for a Conservative personally, though that's not saying a lot, but his party and core supporters are quite a bit less so, and if they win convincingly there'll be a lot of pressure from them to push through an agenda that generally benefits the rich at everyone else's expense.
More complicated, and still probably bad
Looking more likely at the moment is that the Conservatives will be the largest party, but without enough MPs for a majority (in theory they need half - 325 - in practice they could get away, barely, with around 320, because the Speaker doesn't vote, and the Sinn Fein MPs refuse to take an oath of allegiance to the Queen, and so don't take up their seats. This could go several ways:
Firstly, the Conservatives could try to rule as a minority government, as in Canada, and hope the other parties aren't willing to vote them down, especially if they're only a few MPs away from a majority. Secondly, they could go into a coalition government with some of the other parties. Thirdly, if Labour don't lose too many seats, Labour and the Lib Dems could form a coalition to outvote the Conservatives. Finally, the parties might be entirely unable to agree on anything, and we might have a new election very soon (please, no...).
There are a lot of complicated political calculations here, and none of the three main parties is willing to say what it would do in public, so whatever happens, this will get messy - but probably not as bad as a Conservative majority, and a Labour-Lib Dem coalition could in principle be very progressive (or not, depending on which bits of each party's policies get agreed on).
Open Wide...
Shut Up!
