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October 01, 2008
Prime Minister of all the UK?
David Cameron is giving his big Conference speech in Birmingham. He's just been talking about the Union and saying:
"I don't want to be Prime Minister of just England. I want to be Prime Minister of all the United Kingdom."
Fair sentiment perhaps. But in one sense that could be a real hostage to fortune. Wales, yes, the Tories might make electoral inroads come 2010 and gain a reasonable number of seats; though nowhere near a majority. But Scotland, that's just not going to happen. The Tories will be lucky to gain a few seats; still leaving them in the low-mid single figures. And even in England there will still be large swathes of the country - key metropolitan areas, the NE, student towns - where the Tories have minimal representation.
The wonders of First-Past-the-Post means none of this matters in terms of getting an overall parliamentary majority. Gordon Brown is PM of the UK despite the Conservatives being the most popular party in England in 2005. But it does have implications in terms of connections with the whole electorate, accountability and representation.
Posted by malcolmclark on October 01, 2008
Comments
The problem here seems to be that England and Scotland are rapidly developing different political landscapes and the Scottish one doesn't include the Conservative party.
I wonder if this is something that could be used to sell Conservative unionists on a proportional system - it's not that Tories don't exist north of the border, but that they don't do that well; a problem a proportional system would correct to some degree by allowing a few Scottish Conservatives to take seats and give the party roots in the country that frankly it doesn't look like they'll manage to put down any other way.
Posted by: Alex Parsons at October 1, 2008 04:51 PM
"Gordon Brown is PM of the UK despite the Conservatives being the most popular party in England in 2005".
The Tories had 8.1 million votes: the main left-of-centre 13 million votes. Brown could of course have been leading a left-of-cenre coalition supported by amongst others 13 million English voters. The Tories would not be able to raise this ancient chestnut if Labour had not been so stupid as to rat on their 1997 commitment.
Posted by: Joe Patterson at October 1, 2008 05:11 PM
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