British election just over a week away

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Want something fun to do? Then check out the BBC's "Election seat calculator."

Because, as you know, Britain heads to the polls on May 6, and the race between Prime Minister Gordon Brown's governing Labour Party, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Democrats is incredibly tight. Labour appears to be in third at the moment, with David Cameron's Conservatives in the lead and the historically third-place Lib Dems, headed by upstart Nick Clegg, a stunning second (after Clegg did so well in the first debate).

In Britain's first-past-the-post electoral system, though, Labour has a built-in advantage that means it could actually lose the popular vote and yet still win the most seats. This is because Conservative support is heavily concentrated in "safe" ridings that the party tends to win with big majorities, whereas Labour support is more evenly distributed across ridings in which it tends to be competitive. And in a first-past-the-post system, as opposed to a proportional representation system (in which seats are allocated based on the popular vote), it doesn't matter if you win a seat by a single vote or by thousands and thousands of votes, what matters is just having the most votes in a riding. (It's like Gore winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college vote, which tends to favour Republicans.)

Anyway, it's all quite exciting, and entertaining, and it's worth paying attention to. Here, as a good entryway in, in addition to the links above, is the BBC's main election coverage page. 

As for me -- a Canadian but also a British citizen, if much more Canadian than British, and probably much more American than British, too -- I've had enough of Labour, which has been in power since 1997, when Tony Blair trounced John Major, but still prefer it to the Conservatives, who are revitalized under Cameron but who are still a party of regressive right-wing policies. I actually like the Lib Dems a great deal now, and that's the party I tend to have the most in common with, policy-wise. I just don't know enough about Clegg, who remains a bit of a novice. And while Brown's premiership has hardly been all that impressive -- I'm not sure how it could have been, though, given Blair's shadow over it -- there's a lot I like about the PM and his priorities. And so I actually wouldn't mind to see a Labour-Lib Dem coalition committed to the environment, civil liberties, and responsible diplomacy (as opposed to Blair's pro-American adventurism, however rooted in idealism).