General Election 2015
The UK general election will be contested in May 2015, with the Labour Party (led by Ed Miliband) and the Conservative Party (led by David Cameron, the current prime minister), face to face, both with an indicated 31% of votes. UKIP enters the election contest for the first time, with a level of support currently at 16% and with the Liberal Democrats trailing fourth, with just 9.0% of the vote accordinging to current polls.
Political analysts and opinion polls agree that in the general elections of May 8 no political party will have a majority in parliament with the most likely outcome a “hung parliament”.
After the last election in 2010, "a similar situation arose with neither Labour nor the Conservatives having enough seats to form a majority in parliament, and therefore having to reach an agreement with the Liberal Democrats" and / or other minority parties may become a reality again.
In the event that the UK has a hung parliament. What next?
The theory is straightforward: the crunch constitutional test for any British government is that it retains “the confidence of the House of Commons”. Without the support of a majority of parliament’s 650 elected members, an executive is not considered capable of functioning.
So, as soon as the final result is known – or, in all probability, rather earlier – the negotiations will begin. The goal, quite simply, is to assemble an alliance in parliament, so that during crucial votes on sensitive subjects they can count on the backing of at least 326 MPs.
What is all this likely to mean after 7 May? This may, famously, be the most uncertain British general election for several generations. But according to almost every pollster, it is highly unlikely that either Labour or the Conservatives, currently neck-and-neck in the Guardian polls average, will win an outright majority of 326 seats.
The coin is in the air, but the truth is that the elections will be the end of British bi-partisanship, whereby historically the country was ruled by the conservatives and liberals, until in 2010 the Liberal Democrats first formed a coalition with the "Tories" (conservatives).
Experts agree that the three Liberal-Democratic minority parties, Scottish Nationalist and anti-immigrant UKIP, will maintain the balance of power in favour of the Conservatives or Labour.
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