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United Kingdom

LIVE BLOG: 2017 UK election results

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The Houses of Parliament at sunset. British voters are taking part in their likely final election as a member of the European Union (sborisov / 123rf)

Throughout the night, Suffragio will be live-blogging the results of the United Kingdom’s general election to elect all 650 members of the House of Commons on a constituency-by-constituency basis.United Kingdom Flag Icon

BBC Exit Poll
10:00 pm BST, 5:00 pm ET

Conservative Party — 314 (down from 330)
Labour Party — 266 (up from 229)
Scottish National Party — 34 (down from 54)
Liberal Democrats — 14 (up from 9)
UKIP — Zero seats.

If these results are true, the Tories are in for an awful night. Theresa May called a snap election to boost her majority. She’s not only lost seats, but this result would mean a hung parliament and, more likely than not, make Jeremy Corbyn the next prime minister. With this result, however, it is very unlikely that we will know anything about the composition of the next government anytime soon.

10:36 pm BST, 5:36 pm ET

Note that the UK pound has dropped from $1.29 to $1.27 upon news of the exit poll showing that the Conservatives have lost their majority. Spectacular. Feels much like Brexit.

This is all still way too close to call anything.

A 10-seat swing could mean the difference between government and  opposition.

On these numbers, though, it’s possible that neither Conservatives nor Labour could gain a majority (even if it means , which means a more unstable minority government or even a fresh election later this year (and it seems unlikely that May will stick around to lead the Tories — instead, foreign secretary Boris Johnson or Brexit secretary David Davis. Of course, a second 2017 election would take place as the two-year clock continues to tick from May’s decision in March to invoke Article 50, depriving the United Kingdom of precious negotiation time vis-à-vis Brexit when it will be focused on internal domestic politics.

If you add the Labour projection to the Liberal Democratic, Green, SNP, Plaid Cymru and some of the republican MPs from Northern Ireland, it’s still difficult to see how Corbyn gets to a majority.

But it’s clear that some leading Tory figures, like home secretary Amber Rudd, could be in trouble. Though it was clear that May’s campaign stumbled, the final polls (save Survation) showed the Tories with anywhere from a 1% to 12% lead. This seems to indicate that youth turnout was higher, boosting Labour’s surge.

One question is how the Scottish National Party seems to have done so poorly — it’s set to lose 22 seats from the 56 seats it won in 2015. That’s even worse than the Tories. If that holds, I’ll be curious to see if the SNP lost to Ruth Davidson’s Conservatives or to a last-minute Labour surge. If the former, it means that Labour has done incredibly well in England.

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Newcastle upon Tyre North
11:06 pm BST, 6:06 ET

The first seat to report — and not in Sunderland! Note that this a constituency that swung to Labour in 2015, and it’s a predictably safe Labour seat in the northeast. It’s also a constituency that held wide appeal for potential UKIP voters.  What’s interesting is that the UKIP (and even the Liberal Democrat and Green) vote has collapsed from two years ago. So while Labour won nearly 5,000 more votes than in 2015, the Tories have also won nearly 2,500 more votes from the last election.

Labour — 24,071 (19,301)
Conservative — 9,134 (6,628)
LibDem — 1,812 (2,218)
UKIP — 1,482 (5,214)
Green — 595 (1,724)

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Houghton and Sunderland South
11:15 pm BST, 6:15 ET

Again, a reliable Labour seat, and Bridget Phillipson will hold onto this northeastern seat. But the Tory swing here is larger than the Labour swing. Not a great sign for Labour’s hopes tonight, because it seems to show that so many of those UKIP voters, some of which might have once voted Labour, have now switched over to the Conservative Party. In this constituency two years ago, UKIP placed second. Still too murky to know what, exactly, has happened today on a national (or even England-wide) basis.

Labour —24,665 (21,218)
Conservative —12,324 (7,105)
UKIP —2,379 (8,218)
LibDem — 908 (791)

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Newcastle upon Tyne East
11:58 pm BST, 6:58 ET

Opposition chief whip Nick Brown holds this seat, with a much improved margin. Labour will take solace in this result, the Tories less.

Labour — 28,127 (19,378)
Conservative — 8,866 (6,884)
LibDem —2,574 (4,332)
UKIP — 1,315 (4,910)

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North Swindon
12:00 pm BST, 7:00 ET

Tories are swinging up 3%, Labour is swinging up 11%. Conservative Justin Tomlinson holds the seat, but another data point in favor of a strong night for Labour. This is the first seat announced from southwestern England, so it’s perhaps more meaningful than the previous Newcastle and Sunderland results.

Conservative — 29,431 (26,295)
Labour — 21,096 (14,509)
LibDem — 1,962 (1,704)
UKIP — 1,564 (8,011)

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Washington and Sunderland West
12:10 pm BST, 7:10 ET

As in Sunderland Central and Newcastle Central, it’s a bigger swing to the Tories than to Labour.  Sharon Hodgson will still hold the seat with a strong majority, though. The regional picture seems to be showing that the Tories are taking more than their fair share of northeastern UKIP voters, even as Labour is improving on its 2015 showing. This is yet another seat where UKIP finished second (above the Tories) in the last election, and it’s still held onto nearly 7% of the constituency vote in 2017.

Labour — 24,639 (20,478)
Conservative — 11,699 (7,033)
UKIP — 2,761 (7,321)
LibDem — 961 (993)

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Kettering
12:30 pm BST, 7:30 ET

In the center of the country, Northamptonshire, Philip Hollobone has held this seat since 2005. Hollobone is a very euroskeptic MP, and while there’s a 6% swing to the Tories, there’s an 11% swing to Labour. So far, all holds. No gains for any party — yet.

Conservative — 28,616 (24,467)
Labour — 18,054 (11,877)
LibDem — 1,618 (1,490)

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Nuneaton
12:30 pm BST, 7:30 ET

UKIP is down 11%, now the Tories and Labour are both up 6%. Marcus Jones will hold this seat.

Conservative — 20,827 (23,755)
Labour — 19,016 (15,945)
UKIP — 1,619 (6,582)
LibDem — 914 (816)

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Broxbourne

12:40 pm BST, 7:40 ET

This is the first seat in the southeast, and it’s a great story for Labour (as opposed to the story in the north). The Tories, and Charles Walker, will hold this seat, but Labour will have seen a double-digit swing. UKIP came in second place here in 2015, and their collapse has helped Labour far more than Conservatives.

Conservative — 29,515 (25,797)
Labour — 13,723 (8,470)
LibDem — 1,481 (1,467)
UKIP — 9,074 (848)

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Darlington
12:57 BST, 7:57 ET

Well. Both the Tories and Labour are up 8%. This is a good result for the Tories, but not nearly the kind of result May needed for a landslide. UKIP, of course, is down 10%. Another seat in the North East in county Durham, and Jenny Chapman holds.

Conservative — 22,681 (17,637)
Labour — 19,401 (14,479)
UKIP — 1,180 (5,392)
LibDem — 1,031 (1,966)

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Wrexham
1:08 BST, 8:08 ET

This is the first result from Wales, and Ian Lucas will hold this seat. The swing here is just as much to Labour as it was to the Tories. UKIP didn’t field a candidate, so its 5,072 votes from 2015 were up for grabs. Notably, the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru has lost some of its vote share from 2015, too. So that means that UKIP voters have split between the two major parties.

Labour — 17,153 (12,181)
Conservative — 15,321 (10,350)
PC — 1,753 (2,501)
LibDem — 865 (1,735)

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Rutherglen & Hamilton West
1:18 BST, 8:18 ET

This is the first seat from Scotland, and it’s also the first Labour gain! Ged Killen here will take the seat from the Scottish National Party, in line with exit polling that shows it will be a very bad night for the SNP. Notably, though, while the SNP swing is down 16%, Labour swung up just 2%, while the Tories swung up 12%. That’s good news for both of the two unionist parties, perhaps, and it shows that the SNP is not only fighting a two-way race against unionists in Ruth Davidson’s Conservatives, but a four-way race with the Liberal Democrats and Labour as well.

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Tooting
1:27 BST, 8:27 ET

Tooting is the first constituency from London, and wowza. Rosena Allin-Khan has retained the seat from the 2016 by-election that Sadiq Khan vacated when he became London’s mayor. A big swing to Labour, nonetheless, from the 2015 election in a constituency that the Tories thought they might steal at the beginning of the election. The Liberal Democrats are doing better here than in 2015, too.

Labour — 34,694 (25,263)
Conservative — 19,236 (22,421)
LibDem — 3,057 (2,107)
Green — 845 (2,201)

* * * * *

Mhairi Black, the 22-year-old MP from Scotland, has won reelection.

Paisley & Renfrewshire South
1:32 BST, 8:32 ET

Mhairi Black, the youngest MP at just 22, will hold this seat, finally some good news for the SNP tonight.

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Vale of Clwyd
1:44 BST, 8:44 ET

Here’s the first Labour gain in Wales. Chris Ruane will take back the seat he lost to James Davies in 2015 by a health majority of nearly 2,500. Again, the Liberal Democrats are down, Plaid Cymru was down 3%, and UKIP was nonexistent (after winning 4,577 in the last election).

Labour — 19,423 (13,523)
Conservative — 17,044 (13,760)
PC — 1,551 (2,486)
LibDem — 666 (919)

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Putney
1:49 BST, 8:49 ET

Justine Greening, the sitting education secretary, has won her seat in Putney, another London seat. But whereas she won by a margin of 53.8% to 30.0% in 2015, she’ll only win by a margin of 44.1% to 40.8%. Notably, as in Tooting, the Liberal Democrats are winning more of a very reliably pro-Remain vote, and they will have nearly doubled their support from the last election. Another good data point for Labour in London. The Greens are also down sharply from 2015.

Conservative — 20,679 (23,018)
Labour — 19,125 (12,838)
LibDem — 5,448 (2,717)
Green — 1,107 (2,067)

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Angus Robertson, deputy SNP leader, has lost his seat. (Facebook)

Moray
2:21 BST, 9:21 ET

This is a huge win for the Tories. After winning Angus, they have now won Moray from Angus Robertson, the deputy SNP leader. And it wasn’t close, a 16% swing to the Tories and a 11% swing down for the SNP. With 48% of the vote, Douglas Ross nearly won an absolute majority. A great night so far for the Tories, who have taken two seats from the SNP (and won a swing of 12% from the SNP in the third seat that Labour won).

Conservative — 22,637 (22,637)
SNP — 15,319 (24,384)
Labour — 5,208 (4,898)
LibDem — 1,078 (1,395)

* * * * *

Battersea
2:21 BST, 9:21 ET

This is another London constituency, and it’s a 10% swing to Labour. Jane Ellison, who easily won in 2015, has lost to Labour’s Marsha de Cordova.

Labour — 25,292 (18,792)
Conservative — 22,876 (26,730)
LibDem — 4,401 (2,241)

European Union

The smart (and cynical) politics behind Boris’s Brexit decision

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London mayor Boris Johnson has become the most high-profile supporter of the ‘out’ side of the United Kingdom’s EU membership referendum. (Getty)

For a two-term incumbent mayor of London, supporting the campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union might amount to policy malpractice.European_Union

No city stands to lose more from Brexit than London, which, despite sterling’s resilience, has become the de facto financial capital of Europe and is one of three or four truly global capitals. If the British vote to leave the European Union, of course, many finance jobs could leave London, depressing many other secondary industries. While there are powerful arguments for Brexit, even among London’s residents, it’s hard to believe that Brexit would be a net positive for London as a global and European capital.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t surprising that London’s outgoing mayor, Boris Johnson, announced his support Sunday for leaving the European Union in a lengthy ‘more in sorrow than in anger’ editorial for The Telegraph. It followed a weeklong Hamlet act that left prime minister David Cameron gasping for the support of his slightly older one-time Eton classmate. Johnson couched his support for Brexit in terms of restoring democratic control to British voters, all while proclaiming his love for Europe and making the case for strong EU-UK relations in a post-Brexit world.

Be bold, Johnson urged British voters!

Now is not the time to ‘hug the skirts of Nurse in Brussels.’

‘Boris’ is one of a few British politicians known to voters by his first name, and his star power was enough to slam the British pound to a seven-year low Monday morning. Breaking ranks with most of the cabinet in David Cameron’s majority government, Johnson upended the Brexit battle, transforming what was already becoming a tough internal fight among Tories into an all-out struggle to dominate the post-referendum era.  Continue reading The smart (and cynical) politics behind Boris’s Brexit decision →

Uncategorized

Corbyn versus Cameron: The future of PMQs in Great Britain?

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For the first time since Corbynmania began earlier this summer, the Labour backbencher and leftist rebel — now favored to become the Labour Party’s next leader when all the votes in the leadership contest are counted on Saturday — directly challenged prime minister David Cameron in the House of Commons on Monday.United Kingdom Flag Icon

Ostensibly, it was just another question about the Conservative position on admitting more refugees from Syria and abroad (see video above).

But there’s some fascinating body language that could show us what the future of British parliamentary politics will look like — and very soon.

* * * * *

RELATED: Corbyn’s surprise rise in Labour leadership race highlights chasm

RELATED: The rational case for supporting Corbyn’s Labour leadership

* * * * *

Corbyn, the MP from Islington North since 1983, has the distinction of bucking prior Labour leaders more than any other backbencher. But a surge of support for Corbyn, viewed by supporters as an earnest defender of British leftism, swelled the ranks of the Labour electorate. New members, presumably swept up by Corbyn’s charms, joined in the tens of thousands simply by paying a £3 membership fee. With the support of some of the country’s largest and most powerful unions, Corbyn quickly — and surprisingly — shot to the top of the pack against his three more moderate rivals.

Ironically, many of the 35 MPs who nominated Corbyn do not even support him; instead, they supported him to give Labour’s far left, previously an anemic force in party politics, a voice in the election.

There’s still a chance that shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, who won plaudits last week for her strong stand on admitting more migrants to Great Britain, could win — and there’s a sense that she emerged only too late as the most ‘prime ministerial’ of the four candidates vying for the leadership. There’s still even a chance that the former frontrunner, shadow health minister Andy Burnham, could win. But oddsmakers are still betting on Corbyn to emerge victorious on Saturday. Voting opened on August 10, though many Labour voters have only recently received their ballots. Votes are tabulated on a preference basis — so if a voter’s first choice is eliminated after the first round of counting, the vote is transferred to the second choice and so on.

While Corbyn will almost certainly win the first round, there’s a chance that, as other candidates are eliminated, the anti-Corbyn vote will consolidate behind either Burnham or Cooper. The most moderate candidate, Liz Kendall, most associated with the policies of moderate former prime minister Tony Blair, is widely predicted to finish last.

corbyn

Nowhere will that political earthquake create more tremors than at Westminster, where few members of the parliamentary Labour Party support Corbyn (pictured above), who may struggle to enforce the kind of party discipline he has so often bucked. Virtually no one believes that Corbyn will survive as Labour leader until the next scheduled general election in 2020 — and that it is only a matter of time before more seasoned Labourites hatch a restoration. Many senior shadow cabinet members flatly refuse to serve in a Corbyn-led opposition. Blairites (and Brownites) on Labour’s moderate wing worry that Corbyn’s 1980s-style socialism will doom the party’s chances in the 2020 election or beyond, and fear Labour could split, as it did briefly in the 1980s under former leader Michael Foot. Continue reading Corbyn versus Cameron: The future of PMQs in Great Britain? →

United Kingdom

Seven things to watch for in Cameron’s next government

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It’s morning in the United Kingdom, and the BBC is projecting that the Conservative Party will win 325 seats — exactly half of the House of Commons, and an increase of 20 seats from the 305 seats that the Tories held in the prior parliament.United Kingdom Flag Icon

What’s clear is that prime minister David Cameron will keep his job, and all the talk of a hung parliament and weeks of coalition-building seems to have been wrong.

But what will Cameron face in the next five years?

Here are the seven things to watch, as the second Cameron government unfolds: Continue reading Seven things to watch for in Cameron’s next government →

Canada

What makes Canada (and Ottawa) great is its open society

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DSC09696

A policeman flagged me down when I was poking around Canada’s parliament earlier this year in Ottawa. I’m sure that I looked somewhat suspicious peering into old windows, after a tour spent nosing into closed-off corridors, trying to catch just the right angle to snap a photo of the official portraits of Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien and other prime ministers. Canada Flag Icon

The officer, however, didn’t yell at me or scold me. He didn’t say that the parliament was off limits. Instead, he gave me a Canada flag pin and welcomed me to his country, and said he was glad that I was visiting Ottawa.

It’s a moment that captured perfectly one of the real differences between American and Canadian culture — and not just politically. It also made me realize how instinctively I wince when I see any security officer of any kind, living for more than a decade in post-2001 New York and Washington.

That difference in tone is one of the many, real differences between American and Canadian culture.

What’s most tragic, from a long-term policy perspective, about today’s horrible shooting on Parliament Hill is that Canada might one day feel the kind of anti-terror paranoia that has led so many US politicians of both major parties to leap overboard when it comes to security theater and willingly shred and abuse civil and political rights (including the Fourth Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure) all in the name of ‘protecting the homeland.’ Canada’s immigration policies and its open society have made it, in many ways, a more welcoming destination for the rest of the world outside North America. Half of Toronto’s residents, for example, are foreign-born.

No one knows the reasons for today’s awful attack, and US-based pundits will find a way to turn it into another exhibit for their pet causes.

Today’s attack already ended the life of a Canadian soldier, Nathan Frank Cirillo. It would be even sadder if it reduced the open, decent and welcoming culture with which Canada has become synonymous.

Comparative Politics, United States

Toward a pink-blue coalition: how House Democrats can rescue Boehner’s speakership

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Last week, I noted that German chancellor Angela Merkel succeeded in achieving the post-partisanship in Germany that US president Barack Obama had hoped to achieve when he ran for president in 2008.USflag

While that’s somewhat of an unfair comparison given the collegiality and consensus that’s developed in Germany’s postwar politics, there’s perhaps a lesson for US politicians to learn from the example of German politics in resolving the current standoff that has shut down the federal government of the United States and threatens to precipitate a sovereign debt crisis later this month over the US debt ceiling.

Even after Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats won a once-in-a-generation landslide victory, she remains five seats of an absolute majority in Germany’s Bundestag (the lower house of the German parliament) and well short of a majority in the Bundesrat (the upper house), so she’s locked in negotiations — likely for the rest of the year — to form a viable governing coalition with either her rival center-left Social Democrats or the slightly more leftist Green Party.

Contrast that to the United States, where a minority of a party that controls one-half of one branch of the American government has now succeeding in effecting a shutdown of the US government.

In the US House of Representatives today, speaker John Boehner (generally) operates on the ‘Hastert rule.’  He’ll only bring bills to the floor of the House that are supported by a ‘majority of the majority’ — a majority of the 232-member Republican caucus.  So even if 115 Republicans and all 200 Democrats in the House support a bill, such as a clean ‘continuing resolution’ to end the current shutdown, they won’t be able to do so if 117 Republicans prefer to condition a continuing resolution upon a one-year delay of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as ‘Obamacare.’

It’s not uncommon in parliamentary systems for the ‘loyal opposition’ to sometimes lend their support for an important piece of legislation.  Earlier this year in the United Kingdom, British prime minister David Cameron passed a marriage equality law only with the support of the opposition Labour Party in the House of Commons in light of antipathy within a certain segment of the center-right Conservative Party to same-sex marriage.

In country after country in Europe, including Greece, Ireland and Latvia, traditional rivals on the left and right have sucked up the political costs of austerity and voted to accept difficult reforms, tax increases and tough budget cuts in the face of rising unemployment and depression-level economies in order to avoid the further tumult of being pushed out of the eurozone’s single currency.  If Italy’s left and right could support former prime minister Mario Monti’s technocratic government for 15 months, it’s not outside the realm of democratic tradition to believe that Boehner could form a working coalition in the US House to resolve a crisis that threatens not only American political credibility in the world and the American economy, but the entire global economy.

But as Alex Pareene at Salon wrote earlier today, the United States doesn’t have a parliamentary system, it has a presidential system where an opposition party that controls one house of Congress can cause a crisis if it wants to do so:

An American parliamentary system with proportional representation wouldn’t immediately or inexorably lead to a flourishing social democracy, but it would at least correct the overrepresentation of an ideological minority, and cut down on intentional tactical economic sabotage. The reason we’re in permanent crisis mode isn’t “extremism,” but a system of government that guarantees political brinkmanship.

There’s a bit of ‘grass is always greener’ mentality to that counterfactual.  Parliamentary systems come with their own set of difficulties, and governments in parliamentary systems can wind up just as paralyzed as the current American government seems to be — former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is causing a political crisis this very week in Italy that will culminate in a vote of no confidence on Wednesday against the fragile coalition headed by center-left prime minister Enrico Letta.  Though the government’s been in power for just five months, Italy could face its second set of elections in 12 months if Letta’s government falls.  Belgium famously went without a government for 535 days between 2009 and 2011 because no majority coalition could form a government.  Moreover, minority governments in parliamentary systems often lurch from crisis to crisis, with individual lawmakers willing and able to ‘hold up’ the government’s legislation.

But the United States need not change its entire system of government to take away a few lessons from Merkel and from Germany.

Juliet Eilperin and Zachary A. Goldfarb at The Washington Post suggested earlier Tuesday that Boehner make a push to become the first truly bipartisan speaker:

[T]he press tends to trumpet two unflattering themes: that Boehner can neither manage his own conference nor make a credible deal with the White House. As a result, the narrative runs, Americans are left careening from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis, and Congress can’t even tackle popular initiatives such as immigration reform. A host of other potential changes supported by huge swaths of both parties — from tax and entitlement reform to infrastructure spending — are also left on the table just because of the fallout Boehner faces from a few dozen, ultra-conservative Republicans.

At least that’s the rap against Boehner, whose speakership so far has been defined by blocking Obama’s priorities rather than producing significant laws. But that could all change if he were just to decide to say to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.): “Let’s enter a grand coalition. Democrats will vote for me for speaker as long as Republicans hold a majority. And we’ll do a budget deal that raises a little bit of tax revenue and reforms entitlements. We’ll overhaul the tax code for individuals and businesses. We’ll pass immigration reform and support the infrastructure spending that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and labor unions want.”

Call it a pink-blue coalition — the moderate Republicans and the Democrats.  (Or maybe the donkey-rhino‡ coalition). Continue reading Toward a pink-blue coalition: how House Democrats can rescue Boehner’s speakership →

Syria, United Kingdom

Cameron loses House of Commons vote on Syria military intervention

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cameronloses

The joint US and European will to respond to last Wednesday’s chemical attack on the eastern outskirts of Damascus has received a blow after the British House of Commons voted narrowly 283 to 272 against a resolution that would have provisionally authorized British military intervention in Syria — a staggeringly rare defeat for a British government on a matter of foreign policy.Syria Flag Icon freesyriaUnited Kingdom Flag Icon

The vote comes as a blow not only to UK prime minister David Cameron, who suffered defections from nearly three dozen skeptical Conservatives as well as additional Liberal Democratic members of his own governing coalition, but also interventionists in the United States who are urging US president Barack Obama to launch an aggressive attack on the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.  It is very unlikely that the United States would proceed with unilateral military action without British support, which is unlikely to come anytime soon in light of Cameron pledge to respect the parliamentary decision:

I can give that assurance. Let me say, the House has not voted for either motion tonight. I strongly believe in the need for a tough response to the use of chemical weapons, but I also believe in respecting the will of this House of Commons. It is very clear tonight that, while the House has not passed a motion, it is clear to me that the British parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action. I get that and the government will act accordingly.

It’s a vote that has the potential to turn the US-UK relationship upside down, to turn Middle Eastern realpolitik upside down, to turn British politics upside down and even to turn US politics upside down.  For a sitting prime minister to lose a vote like this is a huge reversal in the relationship between an ever-more powerful British executive and an ever-more feeble parliament on issues like security policy and foreign affairs.

Most immediately, it means that a U.S.-led missile strike, which seemed imminent yesterday, will now be postponed until early next week, at the earliest, when chemical weapons inspectors from the United Nations have had an opportunity to provide their initial assessment of what happened in Ghouta and eastern Damascus.  The vote also comes after several news organizations reported that U.S. and allied intelligence agencies are assured that while the chemical attack came from pro-Assad forces, they are uncertain who ordered the attack amid indications that Assad and his top military brass were caught unaware.  Meanwhile, French president François Hollande has backed off earlier, more urgent calls for military action.

Cameron’s massive defeat does not necessarily preclude a vote next week after the United Nations reports back as to which party — and which chemical agent — is to blame for the horrific Damascus attack.  If the UN report, together with US and European intelligence, all points to Assad’s culpability, Cameron and Obama will have a much stronger case for an aggressive response, either inside or outside the United Nations Security Council.

Meanwhile, the vote is perhaps the largest political victory in Ed Miliband’s three-year tenure as leader of the Labour Party.  Miliband firmly opposed the resolution even after Cameron offered to submit to a second vote before authorizing military action, making today’s resolution essentially a vote for the principle of the British government’s potential military intervention.  The vote capped a tumultuous 24 hours in Westminster, with Cameron’s allies accusing Miliband of giving ‘succour’ to the Assad regime, which probably didn’t make it likelier that Labour would close ranks with the Tories over a potential Syria intervention.  It was a principled stand for Miliband and, though he’s closer to British public opinion on Syria than Cameron, it was also a courageous stand for a young opposition leader to oppose a sitting government on such a crucial matter of foreign policy.

Miliband’s line boils down to one sentence from his statement earlier today: ‘Evidence should precede decision not decision precede evidence’: Continue reading Cameron loses House of Commons vote on Syria military intervention →

United Kingdom

Tensions start to appear in Tory-Lib Dem coalition in the UK

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There might be no more yawn-inducing issue in UK politics than House of Lords reform.

But that issue has led to the greatest moment of crisis between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democratic Party, which together govern the United Kingdom in a first-of-its-kind Tory-Lib Dem coalition government.

The importance of the week’s jousting is not about electoral reform, to save the suspense.

It’s about the that it marked the first major tear in the Coalition: a Tory bid to stymie Lords reform led Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg (pictured above, right) to declare that he would direct his party to vote against another electoral reform measure supported by the Tories.  It’s the first time Clegg has so aggressively and directly fought back against his Coalition partner.

Right-wing newspapers are already savaging Clegg.  But for its faults, the two-party Coalition still remains more united and disciplined than the Tories were (when they were governing by themselves!) in the last years of John Major’s government in the mid-1990s, when Europe and scandal hopelessly split an undisciplined party.  It’s probably more united than the New Labour government in its last years, hopelessly split between Blairites and Brownites on the basis of no true underlying policy differences.

The most alarmist talk about the danger to Cameron’s government is overstated — more most surprising, perhaps, is that the Coalition made it nearly halfway through the natural term of the parliament with so much unity.  Clegg has not yet flinched in giving his party’s support to Tory leader and prime minister David Cameron (pictured above, left), even as the budget cuts of a severe austerity program implemented by Tory chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne seem to be dragging the UK economy back into a double-dip recession, to say nothing of student fees or other policies that are less than satisfying to the Lib Dem rank-and-file, which has typically been more of the left than of the right.

As The Guardian notes, Clegg can claim a moderating influence on the current government:

Most of the cases that [Clegg] can demonstrate are negative ones. The Lib Dems have played a vital role in making Tory legislation less extreme, less red meat. The health reforms could have been worse; Europe policy would have been more barking; welfare changes would have hurt the vulnerable even more.

But voters don’t seem to be giving Clegg much credit.  The center-left Labour now has a five-point lead over the Tories (39% to 34%) in the latest Guardian/ICM poll from late June, but the Lib Dems have taken the greatest electoral brunt with just 14% support, a sharp fall from its 23% vote in May 2010.

Luckily for Clegg and Cameron, most of the UK was too busy on holiday or watching the Olympic Games in London to notice (although Cameron must not be thrilled that his semi-rival, London mayor Boris Johnson, has received such fawning attention).

So what happened? Continue reading Tensions start to appear in Tory-Lib Dem coalition in the UK →