So much for the nail-biter: Conservatives win big in British election

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives May 8, 2015

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Conservatives in Britain are quite a bit less conservative than U.S. Republicans, which I suppose is quite the caveat given what we've seen in the McConnell/Boehner era. But they're still the center-right alternative to the very left-wing Labour Party, and British voters decided once again yesterday that they'd rather keep their government in the hands of those on the right side of the aisle.

The Conservatives look to end up with 329 seats, which is three more than they need for an outright majority. Labour won only 228 seats. It wasn't really that close, and much as we saw with last month's Israeli elections, this came as quite the shock to legacy media who were convinced the race was going to be a nail-biter: Prime Minister David Cameron enjoyed a surprise triumph in the British election Friday as his Conservative Party appeared poised to win a narrow outright victory over a faltering opposition. The result removed a fog of uncertainty but leaves Britain facing two constitutional crises: a potentially damaging referendum on whether to quit the European Union, and renewed pressure from Scottish nationalists who want to leave the 300-year-old United Kingdom.

Referendum looms that could result in Britain's exit from the European Union

The opposition Labour Party took a beating, with its main campaign strategist among those voted out. Shares in U.K. financial institutions jumped in early trading Friday as the threat of Labour's proposed tax hikes on banks receded. Gosh, maybe American voters should do business a favor and get rid of the tax-hikers here. The Conservatives did so well yesterday, it looks like they will hold a majority outright in Parliament, without having to continue their coalition with the center-left Liberal Democrats as they've done since 2010. That's just as well because the Liberal Democrats got shellacked yesterday and don't have many seats left to contribute to a coalition anyway. Cameron and his new government need to get a fairly serious budget deficit under control (sound familiar?), and they also have to make good on their pledge to renew deployment of Britain's submarine-based Trident nuclear defense system. Meanwhile, the Brits are under pressure from NATO to maintain a spending level of 2 percent of GDP on defense, which is not without controversy domestically. Of course, any UK government has to wrestle the tiger that is the National Health Service, which is in rough shape financially and frustrates patients with long wait times and rationing of services. Meanwhile, a referendum looms that could result in Britain's exit from the European Union, while Scottish separatism continues to be an issue as the separatist Scottish National Party did well yesterday. This was not like the Israeli election in the sense that Barack Obama did not make an attempt to undermine his conservative counterpart as he tried to do to Benjamin Netanyahu. He would probably be more aligned with a Labour government, but Obama and Cameron have actually had a pretty good relationship so the U.S. kept mostly hands-off. Still, global media who were predicting and hoping for a Labour win are once again disappointed. The Conservatives emerge from this election stronger politically than they've been since the days of Margaret Thatcher. Hopefully they'll use the opportunity to govern conservatively, which is not easy in the UK but would be well worth the effort if they could pull it off.