Thursday, June 8, 2017

United Kingdom General Election, 2017

If the projections are correct, then we are going to see a hung parliament this year. There are a couple possibilities which are based off of history:
1. Conservative/Liberal Democratic coalition as existed under Cameron's first ministry. I think this is unlikely since the Conservatives are in favor of a return to a Pre-World War I European Order which is what Brexit would bring, and the LibDems are the most opposed to a hard Brexit of the three major parties. They are also completely at odds with each other on environmental policy, making such an arrangement completely ridiculous and unsustainable.
2. Conservative/Labour. Labour is in favor of a soft Brexit and less strong on the environment as the LibDems, making them significantly closer to the hardline conservative policies of the Conservative Party which are very similar to the Republican party of the USA before Drumpf cheated his way into the White House. This would be very similar to the current arrangement in Germany between SPD (think centrist) and the CDU (drifts between very liberal and paleo-conservative on social policy, combined with the most conservative economic policy in all of Europe of the major parties I have studied) and should not be ruled out for Britain. It would be far more sustainable than a CLD coalition in my observation of their platforms.
3. Labour/Liberal Democratic/Scottish National Party would be the only stable coalition which could be formed with the current political arrangement. The Liberal Democrats have a more moderate although still ardently Keynesian economic policy from the results I got with iSidewith, are in line with Labour on social policies, and when it comes to Environmental and foreign policy will make Labour more liberal (in the International Relations part of the ideology). I think this coalition would destory Brexit (hallelujah) and will not end up with the writs being called early (aka a new election), given how their differences I can find are more or less regarding minutia, and will make the Labour Party policies which are more on the loony side under their current leader less likely to pass, while very important legislation which they agree on, such as killing Brexit, will be able to bypass the inevitable conservative opposition. SNP and Labour are very similar on most issues, I got the same score for each on the iSidewith quiz I took. This would mean stable and reasonable policy for Britain for the next 5 years.
4. The most likely of them all, and a win for the Brexit camp, would be a Conservative/Democratic Unionist alliance. This would ensure Brexit happens, and a ridiculous economic policy in line with Thatcherism. This is very unfortunate for Britain.

I hope for this reason that we see an LLD government in the coming years. I think it would be best for Britain economically, socially, preserve the European Union, and govern them as best as possible until the next election comes (whenever that will be). Unfortunately, this will likely not happen with the Conservatives and Democratic Unionists making a coalition with barely enough votes to have more than 50% of the seats.

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