A common lament among the citizens of liberal democracies is that politicians
don't listen to them. On May 6, Britons turned that complaint on its head,
ignoring the insistent warnings of their political classes that failure
to elect a majority
government could lead only to chaos and despair. In a collective
act of joyful bloody-mindedness, the nation somehow found a way to
subvert the electoral system that had long upheld the duopoly of rule by
the Conservative and Labour
parties.
The outcome of this mutiny is revolutionary. Though
his party won the most seats in the House of Commons, it failed to
secure an overall majority, leading to a so-called hung Parliament. So David
Cameron, the new
Prime Minister, has been forced into partnership with the Liberal Democrats. Thus
starts the first formal coalition to rule Britain since World War II. (See the
top 10 moments of the U.K. election campaign.)
It's off to a pretty good start, promising an
emergency budget within 50 days to address Britain's looming deficit.
Cameron's first public utterance as Prime Minister paid graceful tribute
to his Labour predecessors for leaving a country "more open at home,
more compassionate abroad." What he did not go on to say - it may have
struck too close to home - was that such openness has proved inimical to
the preservation of the class-ridden, convention-honoring, pliant
Britain that Conservative and Labour leaders have long relied on.
Ah, unruly Britannia: to focus purely on the new
order in Downing Street
is to miss the deeper significance of Britain's election. Voters
elected a hung Parliament because they wanted to - in order to
circumscribe the power of the politicians who presume to govern them. Britons are still
subjects of Queen
Elizabeth II, who, as their country's unwritten constitution
demanded, graciously accepted the resignation of Gordon Brown and
conferred the premiership on Cameron. But they're also citizens of a new
world of their own making. It's one the Westminster establishment had better get
used to, fast. (See a TIME video on Britain's hung Parliament.)
Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader and now the Deputy
Prime Minister, says he's ready for a new age. "I hope this is the start
of the new politics I have always believed in - diverse, plural and
where politicians with different points of view find a way to work
together," he said, hailing the coalition deal. The Lib Dems emerged
from the election holding the balance of power, though they did less
well than seemed likely during the campaign. Britons, in truth, seemed
unhappy with all the choices on election day. Like pub landlords wearied
by the tiresome antics of their customers, they were clearly ready to
call time on Labour's 13-year rule. But voters remained unconvinced by
the oxymoronic positioning of Cameron's Conservatives as the agents of
change. Despite a better-funded campaign than their rivals',
Conservatives' support ebbed as election day neared.
Pollsters
discovered one reason for this. Swaths of respondents said they'd
prefer a hung Parliament. The mordantly witty response to this finding -
that Britons would prefer their Parliament hung - contained more than a
grain of truth. Last year's exposÉs about the misuse of parliamentary
expenses amplified a mistrust of politicians that had bloomed during the
Blair years - that time when spin led the black arts of politics and
the Prime Minister took Britain
into a war that turned out disastrously.
See
pictures of David Cameron.
It all started so differently. In 1997, Labour and
Blair seemed to herald a fresh consensus and a rising economic tide that
would lift all boats. But by the time Blair left office in 2007, the
gap between Britain's richest and poorest had widened despite an overall
improvement in living standards, and the manipulations and evasions of
the government spin machine had undermined faith in the Establishment.
The numbers tell the story. In the 1955 general
elections, Labour and Conservatives together won 96% of the popular
vote. This month their combined tally was 65%, with the rest fragmented
among everyone from the Lib Dems to nationalists on the Celtic fringe,
neofascists and Greens - who elected their first ever MP. So at the top
of the agenda for the new government must be figuring out just who these
varied, willful, unbiddable New Brits are and how to communicate with
them. (See
pictures of Britons going to the polls.)
"I voted for a hung Parliament because I wanted
politicians to grow up and work together. Tell them to get on with it,
would you?" That sentiment, of a London cabdriver dropping off his passenger
at Westminster on
the final day of negotiations toward a coalition, was understandable.
The markets by then were jittery, and as the parallel Lib Dem –
Conservative and Lib Dem – Labour coalition talks progressed, there
wasn't much sign of grownup behavior in the notoriously infantilized
culture of Westminster. (Parliament's architecture may recall a church,
but in reality it's more of a Hogwarts, an elite institution dedicated
to fostering competition.) There were tales of slanging matches behind
closed doors and fierce confrontations in corners. Yet even in this
febrile atmosphere and despite the obvious gulfs between the Europhilic Lib Dems and
Euroskeptic Tories, signs of increasing dÉtente between the two parties
weren't hard to spot. "This is a time for cool heads," a Lib Dem said,
comforting a Conservative. "If you guys keep your cool, Labour will f___
it up."
Labour did. Notwithstanding Brown's announcement on
May 10 that he would step down as party leader - an essential
prerequisite for any deal, because whoever may or may not have won the
election, Brown certainly lost it - Labour's attempt to stitch up a
coalition of the center-left disintegrated. Cameron moved into 10 Downing Street two
hours before the Lib Dems ratified the coalition agreement. (See how
the U.K. election marked a bad day for the far right.)
Amid the sense that Britain is witnessing a sea change in its
politics, it's easy to forget how unremarkable coalition governments
really are. In the 27-member European Union, there are only three
majority administrations. Indeed, Britain's Conservatives have some
reason to be cheerful that they can share the blame and the burden of
selling unpalatable policies. "Hard and deep cuts are coming," says John
Van Reenen of the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.
He adds, though, that while most electorates respond to economic
hardship by turning to extremist parties, Britain's does not. Such
parties fared badly on May 6. "Brits are prepared to put up with quite a
lot before they start rioting in the streets," says Van Reenen.
See
TIME's Pictures of the Week.
See the
Cartoons of the Week.
Cameron and Clegg, however, cannot rely on a certain
passive strain in British political life. They recognize that they'll
need broad public support for their plans to slash government spending -
a tough sell from a political elite that has at best communicated
imperfectly with voters and at worst has been seen to arrogantly feather
its own nest. Britons'
consent will depend, at least in part, on their new government's
ability to convince them that Westminster really has changed.
And that is something of a moot point. There is
palpable excitement in Britain, a sense that the fresh-faced 43-year-old
Cameron - the youngest
Prime Minister in nearly 200 years - and the fresh-faced
43-year-old Clegg might bring out the best in each other and their
parties. But in their similarities, there are potential pitfalls. Both
attended elite schools (Eton and Westminster, respectively). Both were
students at Britain's two most prestigious universities (Oxford and
Cambridge, respectively). They lead parties stacked with white men from
similarly comfortable backgrounds: 54% of Tories and 41% of Lib Dems were privately
educated, compared with a national average of about 7%. Among candidates
seeking to succeed to the Labour leadership, the front runners are all
white men, all Oxford graduates. Only 4.1% of MPs are from nonwhite
backgrounds, less than half the total percentage in England and Wales - and
especially conspicuous in London,
where nonwhite residents make up 31% of the population.
Women, 22% of MPs, were largely invisible during the
election campaign, or they were assigned walk-on roles as decorative
spouses. Such an imperfect reflection of the wider population received
scant attention from media that more closely reflect the makeup of Parliament -
overwhelmingly white and male - than of their audiences.
And these bald numbers tell only a small part of the
story of how Westminster became so detached from modern Britain. The
speed of social change; the profound transformative effects of
globalization; the digitized, interconnected, buzzing 24-hour culture:
these forces are leaving institutions around the world struggling to
keep up. Still, if the new brooms of the British government wish to
avoid being quickly swept away themselves, they ought to start getting
better acquainted with the people who put them into office.