A Star is Born

A couple of weeks back I posted about how a careless TV interview ended a political career in Ireland. In the current UK General Election the opposite happened last Thursday and a political star was born.

Normally, the UK "Leaders Debate" - the equivalent of the US Presidential Debate - takes place between the leaders of the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives. This year the Liberal Democrats who normally run a poor third in the polls, and have just under 10% of seats in the UK parliament, muscled their way in, although nobody, especially the other parties, was taking their presence very seriously. They should have.

The following day the headlines in all the main UK newspapers declared the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, the clear winner in the debate.

In a poll published yesterday, the Liberal Democrats had the highest support, something that would have been unimaginable in the past. Given the UK "first past the post" electoral system they still haven't a hope of winning the election and, in fact might only pick up 2 or 3 extra seats. However, they will probably be the kingmakers, being able to choose which of the other two parties to support in government or go into coalition with. If this is ends up being the case they will be in a position to name whatever price they want.

To me, coming from a country that uses proportional representation to elect its parliament, the fact that the Liberal Democrats can have nearly a third of the electorate's support and still only win 10% or so of the seats in parliament is evidence of a very broken system and fundamentally anti-democratic. Although successive Conservative and Labour governments for the last 30+ years have paid lip-service to introducing some form of proportional representation there has been no incentive for them to do this - indeed quite the opposite; it would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.

If the Liberal Democrats do hold the balance of power and make proportional representation part of the price of their support it will change UK politics forever.