Britons voted yesterday in the tightest election in decades — one that could cause government gridlock, push the world’s fifth-largest economy closer to leaving the EU and stoke a second attempt by Scotland to break away.
Final opinion polls showed British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives and Ed Miliband’s opposition Labour Party almost in a dead heat, indicating neither would win enough seats for an outright majority in the 650-seat parliament.
However, the surveys suggested there had been some late movement toward Labour.
Photo: Reuters
“This race is going to be the closest we have ever seen,” Miliband told supporters in Pendle, England, on the eve of the vote. “It is going to go down to the wire.”
Cameron said only his Conservatives could deliver strong, stable government.
“All other options will end in chaos,” he said.
The Conservatives portray themselves as the party of jobs and economic recovery, promising to reduce income tax for 30 million people, while forcing through further spending cuts to eliminate a budget deficit still running at 5 percent of GDP.
Labour says it would cut the deficit each year, raise income tax for the highest 1 percent of earners and defend the interests of hard-pressed working families and Britain’s treasured, but financially stretched National Health Service.
If neither party wins an overall majority, talks will begin today with smaller parties in a race to strike deals. That could lead to a formal coalition, like the one Cameron has led for the past five years with the centrist Liberal Democrats, or it could produce a fragile minority government making tradeoffs to guarantee support on key votes.
Leading pollster Peter Kellner of YouGov has predicted the Conservatives will end up with 284 seats to Labour’s 263, with the Scottish National Party (SNP) on 48, the Liberal Democrats 31, the anti-EU UK Independence Party with two, the Greens one, and the Welsh and Northern Irish parties 21.
If that proves correct, both the two big parties would need support from at least two smaller ones to get laws through parliament, as the SNP has ruled out a deal with Cameron.
When no clear winner emerged in the elections of 1974 and 1923, another election was held within a year — but a law passed four years ago makes it much harder to hold a second vote within the five-year parliamentary term.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has
China is mischaracterizing UN Resolution 2758 for its own interests by conflating it with its “one China” principle, US Deputy Assistant Secretary for China and Taiwan Mark Lambert said on Monday. Speaking at a seminar held by the German Marshall Fund, Lambert called for support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the international community at a time when China is increasingly misusing Resolution 2758. The resolution had a clear impact when it changed who occupied the China seat at the UN, Lambert said. “Today, however, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] increasingly mischaracterizes and misuses Resolution 2758 to serve its own interests,” Lambert said. “Beijing