Coveting the crown

May 7th, 2010 - Tags: Britain, Gordon Brown - 1 Comment

So Britain’s big election yesterday yielded the inconclusive results everyone anticipated. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party fell from first to second place in the parliamentary seat count, displaced by David Cameron’s Conservatives. But the Conservatives didn’t win a majority either, and according to British parliamentary customs (which are distinct from Canadian customs, see my blog post below) that means Brown gets to stay on — providing he can meet some preconditions.

The main precondition comes in the form of Nicholas Clegg and his Liberal-Democrats, the third-biggest party in parliament. If Brown can win him over, he’s golden. But! In theory Clegg could just as easily support Cameron, so basically whatever party he backs will wind up in power, and he’s already entered into negotiations with both leaders.

Though he may playing kingmaker now, Clegg was by far the biggest disappointment of the entire election. While his party received an enormous amount of positive media coverage and he was widely considered to have won Britain’s first-ever prime ministerial debates, the Lib-Dems actually ending up losing seats rather than making any sort of breakthrough.

It thus must be more than a tad degrading for the leaders of parties who won five times as many seats as this guy, who can’t even win 60, to go around begging for his support.

Check out the full results on BBC.com.