An Unexpected Outcome

By KERRY BROWN

An Unexpected Outcome

By KERRY BROWN

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s historic coalition government faces complexities regarding domestic and foreign policies

For the first time since World War II, the UK now has a coalition government. The election held in the UK on May 6 failed to deliver a majority for any of the three main parties—the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats and the ruling Labor Party. After fi ve days of negotiations, sitting Prime Minister Gordon Brown stepped down on May 11.He was replaced by a coalition made of the right-wing Conservatives and the centralist Liberal Democrats. As these two parties had spent much of the election campaign attacking each other, this combination struck many observers, even as it happened, as remarkable.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, however. The split election result was an indication of how much the British people felt angered, alienated and dissatisfi ed with all the options available to them.No party particularly excited or won their support this time. Of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, the Conservatives secured less than half. They had no choice,therefore, but to seek a coalition partner.Labor, after 13 years in power, had grown tired and internally divided. For the Liberal Democrats under their young leader Nick Clegg, however politically dangerous liaison with the Conservatives was, it offered them their fi rst real opportunity for power for more than 60 years.

Domestic issues

The coalition will face the worst economic situation of an incoming government ever. Britain has a budget de fi cit accounting for more than 12 percent of its gross domestic product, which puts it in the same bracket as Greece, a country which has just had to agree to a drastic bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund. British bonds are longer term than the Greek ones, so the immediate likelihood of the UK needing to seek support is low. But whichever party won power would have to immediately spell out deep government cuts and higher taxes. While this coalition has created some goodwill and excitement, in view of the severe measures that it will have to introduce, it won’t be popular for very long.

CoURteSY oF KeRRY BRoWN

Some have speculated that cuts of up to 18 percent of government spending might be necessary. That would almost destroy most of Britain’s defense budget and a large part of its much-admired National Health Service. Of course, this is impossible.But as a sign of just how dif fi cult the task before the coalition government is, even the hard-edged Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s only kept spending at a zero growth rate. She never made negative cuts. Before the Falklands War in 1982, her popularity sank to record levels. As one British commentator ruefully commented, Prime Minister Cameron already has his war—in Afghanistan. Even victory in that will offer no help to his problems back home.

One big issue in the election campaign was dissatisfaction with the UK’s old and somewhat crude electoral system. Unlike most other major Western democracies,Britain has a fi rst-past-the-post system that has remained largely unchanged for 150 years. The only signi fi cant electoral innovation was the full enfranchisement of women in 1918. Since then, Britain has been divided into 650 constituencies, with each returning a member of parliament (MP). In each of these, it is the person with the most public votes who wins the seat, even if the opposition parties gain many more when put together than the winner. In theory, one political party could come second in every seat in the UK and not gain a single MP,despite winning an overwhelming popular vote. The Liberal Democrats, with 6 million votes, were just behind the Labor Party with 8 million. But while they only gained 55 seats, the Labor Party had 255.

British politicians have argued that this system at least produces a clear winner.They say that Germany, Israel, Italy and other countries that have a proportional representation system, deliver weaker and less decisive administrations. This election has challenged that. A fi rst-past-the-post system has failed to deliver the one thing it was designed to do—a clear winner. This means that the fi nal reason for having such a system is now gone. People want to feel their vote matters and they are being represented.And with a coalition government already in place, this fear of coalitions being unworkable has partially been dismissed.

What system the UK uses is now under debate. There are probably too many MPs.For every 90,000 people in the UK, there is one representative. In the United States,a senator represents 3 million people. The House of Commons could be reduced by half with no major problem. And at least with fewer MPs, they could be paid more,reducing the likelihood of people claiming spurious expenses to bolster their wages,as happened in the last few years and was exposed, to huge controversy and public anger, in the British media in late 2009 and early 2010.

Britain also has an unelected House of Lords, which has a number of functions—many of them historic, and none of them spelt out in any constitution. Britain,uniquely, has no written constitution.Repeated attempts to reform this have failed, with the last under Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1999 leaving 92 hereditary peers, who are there simply because they were born inheriting a title. It is likely that further reform is called for, with some means of electing members of the upper house, rather than having them appointed politically.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in this coalition have radically different views on the role of the EU

A TIE THATBINDS:Britain’s newConservativePrime MinisterDavid Cameronarrives to chairthe first cabinetmeeting of theConservative/Liberal Democrat coalitiongovernmentin Downing Street in central London on May 13

Levels of inequality in the UK remain worryingly high. Estimates of child poverty are still put more than 1 million children in households that are dependent on state aid,with no economically productive family member. Teenage pregnancies are amongst the highest in Europe. While the UK excels at elite education, primary and secondary schools in the state sector, which educate more than 93 percent of British children,have to fight against a small number of private schools that charge fees of up to$45,000 a year. In fact, 75 percent of British judges, more than half of students at the elite Oxford and Cambridge, and more than 70 percent of British solicitors are from private schools. Of the current cabinet running the British Government, more than half went to private schools and then Oxford or Cambridge. Both Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg were educated at elite feepaying schools—Eton and Westminster,respectively. If race is the greatest area of contention and sensitivity in the United States, then class remains a battleground in the UK. Ironically, it might be a government led by an old Etonian who will fi nally be able to do something about this.

Foreign relations

Britain’s foreign affairs policy will not change dramatically. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in this coalition have radically different views on the role of the EU, with the former being highly skeptical, expressing fears of the EU becoming a kind of super state, challenging British sovereignty, and the Liberal Democrats being highly pro-Europe, even arguing“under the right conditions,” the UK might join the Euro zone. No one at the moment,however, wants a fi ght over this issue, especially in view of what has happened in Greece. David Lidington, a Conservative with highly positive views of the EU, has been appointed the lead Foreign Office minister with responsibility for Europe as a sign that the Labor Party policy of engagement and involvement will continue. New Foreign Secretary William Hague, a close ally of Cameron and a previous leader of the Conservative Party, made his fi rst foreign visit to Washington D.C. on May 15. U.S.President Barack Obama was the fi rst foreign leader to call Cameron to congratulate him on becoming prime minister. The UK will, therefore, continue to seek balancing its role in the EU, with its need to work on a special relationship with the United States,no matter how illusive or frustrating that sometimes is.

A Liberal Democrat with excellent credentials, Chris Huhne has been given the environment portfolio. This means that the stance of the former Labor government on climate change and carbon emissions is unlikely to change. The UK will have a big problem, however, in the coming years.It’s reliance on gas pumped from the North Sea for much of its energy is now likely to shift back to coal and petrol, increasing its carbon emissions at a time when it is mean to be trying to reduce these. There is also the shared problem with other economies—how to create a green economy at a time of economic austerity.

For China, Hague has already talked before becoming foreign secretary of viewing China as an “important” and major relationship. It is true he didn’t use the words set out in the EU policy toward China of seeing it as a “strategic partner.” But now in power,he will probably start to think that way. He visited China last December and has met key fi gures in the Chinese leadership. The policy of engagement under the Labor government will continue. Perhaps now, too,there will be more thought about having at least one major bilateral area of cooperation that will prove what both countries can do with each other. Chinese investment in the UK has gone up, but as yet there has been nothing major or headline grabbing. There are areas of cooperation across the scale.But there now needs to be something bigger to represent all the work both sides have done.

Cameron’s priorities in the next year will be to make the coalition work. To do that, he needs to act on the economy. He has his work cut out. But he knows that the UK cannot do this in isolation and so his government will seek to de fi ne its core international interests early on. It wants more investment for job creation. It wants to fi nd more export markets for goods manufactured in the UK—it is often forgotten that the UK is the world’s sixth largest exporter.It wants action on climate change because of public opinion in the UK. It also wants to continue the pressure on international terrorism and trans-border crime.

Cameron might move to reassert a stronger and more dominant role for the UK in Europe, despite the skeptics in his party. He might also want to be more ambitious in the relationship with China and India. Whatever he does, he is likely to be extremely pragmatic. Britain remains in a dangerous position economically, and that affects its politics. He is unlikely to be as adventurous in his foreign policy as Tony Blair was—but with George W.Bush now gone from the White House,U.S. demands outside of Afghanistan are not likely to be great. Only if Iran or North Korea does something unexpected, will he need to reconsider things. At the moment,while he establishes the new coalition and starts to sort out the economy in the UK,the international status quo will suit him just fi ne.

(The viewpoints in this article do not necessarily represent those ofBeijing Review)

The author is a senior research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in Britain