British Prime Minister David Cameron, having won an unexpected outright victory in Britain’s general elections, heads into his second term facing severe challenges to his nation’s identity and place in the world: how to keep the United Kingdom in the EU and Scotland in the UK.
By winning an absolute majority in Britain’s Parliament, Cameron gained the right to govern without a coalition partner, allowing him to claim a mandate to pursue his own agenda.
However, his majority is so narrow that it will force him to tread carefully with his own fractious legislators to pass legislation and address issues that could fundamentally redefine 21st-century Britain.
Those start with his pledge to hold a referendum by the end of 2017 on Britain’s continued membership in the EU.
He will also be under increased pressure from the other big winners of the election, the Scottish National Party, to revisit the question of independence for Scotland.
“A small majority can quickly turn into a bed of nails,” Spectator magazine editor Fraser Nelson said.
Backbenchers in Cameron’s own party, many of them farther to the right than he is on questions of immigration and Britain’s membership in the EU, “will be his real opposition,” Nelson said.
Complicating Cameron’s life is the fact that this election was also a huge victory for the Scottish National Party, which won 56 of Scotland’s 59 seats, giving it a strong voice in Westminster and making Scotland essentially a one-party state.
On Friday, in front of 10 Downing Street, Cameron promised to “govern with respect,” and “as a party of one nation, one United Kingdom.”
How far Cameron manages to satisfy Scotland and keep Britain together will be crucial to his legacy. One prominent party member, London Mayor Boris Johnson who won his own seat in Parliament, was already suggesting on Friday that it was time to adopt some form of federalism.
The fate of Scotland will also be tied to Cameron’s other main challenge: Britain’s relationship with Europe.
He has promised repeatedly that, if re-elected, he would hold a referendum on continued British membership in the EU by the end of 2017, after efforts to negotiate a “better deal” with Brussels.
If Britain votes to leave the EU, Scotland would almost surely bring forward another referendum on independence, one that might very well pass.
Cameron’s task in Brussels will not be simple, because he wants alterations in the system of free movement of people and labor that could require a treaty change, a complicated and lengthy process. Even nontreaty changes would have to be approved by all 28 member states.
Still, with his electoral mandate — and the considerable showing in the popular vote of the anti-Europe UK Independence Party — European colleagues, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, will have little choice but to work with Cameron to keep Britain a member.
Mujtaba Rahman of Eurasia Group, a consulting firm, put it bluntly in a note to clients in which he argued that the risk of Britain’s leaving the European Union “will jolt European politics for the next two years.”
“The UK will hold a referendum on its EU membership in 2017 following a renegotiation of membership terms,” he wrote. “The result will be uncertain, as Cameron grapples with the impossible demands of Euroskeptics in his party and the unwillingness of other EU capitals to offer significant concessions.”
Cameron has never been very popular with some of his backbenchers.
They are sure to be shocked and overjoyed at the victory he brought them, as they feared Labour would manage, with the Scots, to create a majority to throw the Conservatives out of power.
In the end, Cameron and his campaign won 331 seats.
That is set to buy him considerable credibility for a while, but not forever.
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