If Bachchoo were a Sufi he would say
“Arrey mere yaar don’t take it the wrong way
When I say ‘The Beloved — my stars, my moon, the sun’
I don’t mean any passing skirt, I mean just The One”
From Daan Key Hotein by Bachchoo
By the time you read this, respected reader, the new government of the UK will be in place. As I write, the count of votes in Britain’s 652 constituencies is nearly at an end and the result has been declared. The Tories, under David Cameron, have won 335 seats and the other contender for government, the Labour Party, has scored a disastrous low of 232. Ed Miliband, Labour’s leader, has taken responsibility for the disaster and is about to resign. Labour wasn’t the only big loser of the night. The Liberal Democrats, who had 50 seats in the last Parliament and formed a coalition with the Tories and had ministers in the government for the last five years, were reduced to a humiliating eight seats in the Commons. Their leader Nick Clegg, deputy Prime Minister in the last government has also resigned, declaring his fear that liberalism itself has suffered a universal setback.
The third leader who has resigned because he failed to win a seat is Nigel Farage, the singular leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip). His party has won only one seat but in the last two or three years has given the Tories and the other parties a tremor in their political hearts. The Ukip is a reactionary party whose main campaigning planks are getting Britain out of the European Union, restricting immigration drastically and lifting the ban on smoking in pubs. Their first two policies attracted a lot of attention and even support from the right wing of the Tory Party and from a portion of disillusioned people from both sides of the political spectrum who support the Ukip contention that the presence of immigrants in the country is responsible for several economic shortages and social ills. This anti-immigration stance has forced Mr Cameron to promise the country a renegotiation of terms on which Britain stays in Europe and then a referendum on membership to be put to the country.
The big non-political losers of the night are the pollsters, news pundits and statisticians. They all predicted, sometimes with three polls a day taking and declaring the political temperature of the nation, a hung Parliament with the Tories and Labour gaining 280 to 290 seats each and, therefore, having to rely on one, two or more smaller parties, including the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party (SNP) to form coalitions. Their predictions were, in my humble opinion, as accurate as those of newspaper astrologers and stargazers — in other words: plain wrong.
The Tories have, as Mr Cameron constantly predicted and says he strove for, a clear majority. The mathematics of the Westminster Parliament dictate that of the 652 seats in the House of Commons, a party needs 324 to command a majority. This is owing the fact that four or five of these seats are regularly won by Sinn Fein, a party which stands in the Catholic districts of Northern Ireland, but its MPs, being Irish Republicans don’t swear an oath to the Queen and so can’t vote in Parliament. The Speaker of the House doesn’t vote either, which leaves 646 voting MPs.
The very big shift in this UK election is the threat that the result poses for that unity. Scotland has 59 seats at Westminster. Of these 56 were won by the SNP. The party’s main and declared aim is to break away from the UK and form an independent Scotland. This demand for independence was put to a referendum last year in which the Scots population aged 16 and over voted. The SNP lost the referendum but after their loss began to gain membership and momentum for precisely this perspective.
The party spouts leftish views in so far as it opposes cuts to public spending, opposes further spending on nuclear submarines and is determined to maintain free education for Scots at universities in Scotland. At the last general election, Labour won 40 of these 59 Scottish seats. This time Labour was routed, winning just one seat north of the border. This not only accounts for the 40 Labour losses in Scotland, it also goes some way to influencing their losses south of the border in England. Throughout the campaign, the Tories pointed out that Labour couldn’t win an outright majority and would form some sort of arrangement with the SNP in order to form a government.
This would mean, they said that a party dedicated to breaking up the UK would hold the balance of power in the UK Parliament. This prospect, undoubtedly, scared off very many potential Labour voters. I mean imagine (with no intended realistic projection) if the balance of power, determining whether a government in New Delhi could survive was held by the MPs of a Kashmiri party dedicated to an independent or even a Pakistani Kashmir. An anti-national tail would be wagging the national dog.
The Tories hold a clear though not unshakeable majority which will nevertheless strengthen. Mr Cameron’s hand in his own party. The right wing of the Tories, represented by a considerable number of MPs, is in favour of getting out of the EU. Mr Cameron has indicated, though not promised that after the renegotiation of terms with the EU, he would in the subsequent referendum be an advocate for remaining within Europe.
There are now some among the Tories who will be disappointed with their party’s clear victory as they may even have wanted to lose and cause the party to replace Mr Cameron with one of their Eurosceptic own. Now as Big Ben strikes High Noon, Mr Cameron will polish his shoes and be driven to see the Queen to take over as Prime Minister from himself.
