UK Election: Horse Trading Begins After Hung Result

The general election result in the United Kingdom have left the British people in the most confusing political situation since 36 years with none of the three main political parties winning enough seats to form a government on their own. The only thing that is definite is that the smaller Liberal Democrats party, which only won 57 seats, will be the “king maker”.

British conservative leader David Cameron will have a first shot into forming a government, but in order to do so he will have to court the Liberal Democrats, which have fundamentally different views than the Tories on issues such as tightening immigration laws, relation with Europe and  military involvement in Afghanistan. In other words the Tories and the Liberal Democrats would make some very strange bed fellows to form a stable governing coalition.

Today, David Cameron said he wanted electoral reform, but did not offer proportional representation, a key demand of the Liberal Democrats, whose support he desperately needs to form a government. Current Prime Minister Gordon Brown is not giving up yet on forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and today Gordon Brown said he wants to organize a referendum on electoral reform in his first statement since Thursday’s general election resulted in no overall winner and a hung parliament.

Brown said that he respected Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg’s wish to talk to David Cameron first. The Tories has won the most seats in the new parliament, but are 20 seats short to be able to rule alone. Gordon Brown made it clear that he still hopes to form a minority government with Liberal Democrats support.

The result of the election is confusion and uncertainty, and potentially a very weak government. The UK will have a hung parliament, and it is likely that a new general election will take place within a year. An immediate consequence of the uncertainty of Britain’s political future was a sharp drop of the Pound on world financial markets.