One politician has – in a Monty Python-esque stunt – has his campaign promises carved in stone (“even In The Thick of It wouldn’t go so far”), another has vowed to kill off Doctor Who, and there has been the usual quota of baby kissing and selfie-taking.
British Prime Minister David Cameron on the campaign trail. Photo: AFP
In a couple of days, voters will cast their ballots in what has been billed as the most exciting election in British History. The result is currently too close to call – but the campaign has certainly never reached the dizzying heights of the batshit 2014 New Zealand election.
Currently, it looks like no one party will win the 326 seats it takes to have a majority in the House of Commons. While coalition governments have become the norm on New Zealand over the past 20 years, they still raise fears in the UK.
The Guardian reports a YouGov/Sunday Times poll suggesting that Britain is “heading for the most evenly balanced parliament since 1974 with a key difference: Labour and Tories would both fall a long way short of the 326 seats needed to secure an overall parliamentary majority. The poll put the Tories on 34%, Labour on 33%, suggesting 283 seats and 261 respectively.”
The two major parties, Labour and the Conservatives will likely have to form a government with another party – the Liberal Democrats, Greens, UKIP or the Scottish National Party. It won’t be the first time: in 2010, the Conservatives and LibDems formed a coalition. Nigel Farage’s UKIP has said it would support that again.
But it gets more complicated than that. The SNP’s leader Nicola Sturgeon has said her party would vote down a Labour budget were to hold the balance of power. This led to calls that a Labour-SNP coalition would lead to “absolute chaos”.
“[Sturgeon] said that such a process would not “bring down the Government”,” The Independent reports, “pointing out that when the SNP minority administration at Holyrood had its Budget voted down in 2009, it made a series of concessions before a new one was passed. “That’s what happens in minority parliaments, and it leads to better decisions,” she added.”
The Conservatives’ Theresa May warned a Labour-SNP coalition would be the biggest constitutional crisis since the abdication” of Edward VIII in 1936. And Labour leader Ed Miliband has said there’ll be “no deal, no coalition, no pact” with the SNP, possibly shooting himself in the foot.
“Senior Labour figures have questioned Miliband’s hardline position,” The Guardian reports. “Henry McLeish, a former first minister of Scotland, said the Labour leader could not deny himself the chance of being prime minster by refusing to talk to the SNP.”
It’s understandable, given there’s only really been two coalition governments in post-war Britain, that people are wary of how this might all turn out. Even considering the Conservative-LibDem coalition lasted the full term. “Nevertheless, a mere week before the general elections, polls consistently indicate that no party is likely to win an overall majority,” writes Marie-Noelle Loewe for the London School of Economics and Political Science.
“Each day, we get closer to another hung parliament and the ensuing bartering to form a government. Despite this, party leaders seem to be reluctant to even tentatively suggest which marriage of convenience they would prefer. Instead, polarising and sometimes confusing statements are made about the potential impact of coalitions.”
The New Statesman argues that the maths backs Miliband – based on marginal seats and which way the vote is swinging. “What is the data really telling us? This is a simple game of probability. And the odds are in Miliband’s favour. If Miliband can win all of the red and light red seats…Cameron can win…but the maths is against him.”
Miliband sat down with Russell Brand in the brilliantly coined “Milibrand” video, for what has been termed a “bid for the youth vote”. Early in the interview, he lists a bunch of issues he believes young people care about: workers’ rights, the National Health Service, minimum wage and lesbian and gay rights.
Russell Brand mentions that he’s never voted in an election – and points out that everyone got “all excited” about Tony Blair, and Barack Obama. Many first-time voters were born under Blair and his legacy.
The Guardian writes that voting intentions have been transformed for this generation of first-time voters, dubbed “Tony Blair's children”, who define their politics according to a range of cultural issues. And, as with other Western democracies, get young voter apathy is a major problem:
Of the 3.3 million young people able to cast their ballot for the first time, just 41% will take part in the election, according to a Red Box analysis of YouGov voter-intention data, electoral register figures and birth rates. An estimated 2 million young people will not vote at all. Among the first-time voters who will use their voice, however, Labour has a slight edge over the Conservatives, with 35% support, compared with 30%. First-time voter support for the Conservatives has, however, increased from 22% in the last general election, with the party looking likely to win 285,000 young voters in May.
Back in March, The Independent asked young people how to encourage them to turn out: “I’ve decided not to vote because I don’t feel as though I know enough about politics and the different parties,” said one 22-year-old. “It’s confusing. I haven’t heard about any of the campaigns, but I think campaigns over Facebook are ridiculous and patronising.”
But Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams called for her peers to head to the polls. In a video shot by Dazed magazine, she tells young people to fight against politicians who have “kicked your future in the teeth and hoped you wouldn’t notice”.
If the current polling is to be believed, the real fight isn’t going to be on Thursday, but in the following days, as negotiations to see who can get to that magic 326 seats happen. In the meantime, says Buzzfeed, it’s been both really weird and incredibly boring. So, an average election then?