We have just heard that David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party, has this evening become the next Prime Minister of Great Britain. But the election was held 5 days ago and his party had the greatest number of elected Members of Parliament, and the most number of votes cast in its favour. So why has it taken so long for him to be declared as Gordon Brown's successor?
In Britain we have a system that elects local candidates, not a US style presidential system. Each winning candidate in every constituency takes one of 650 seats in the House of Commons. Each individual in this lower chamber represents their people back in their local constituency. If more than 50% of these seats are held by one political party then that party is said to represent the majority of the people and is thus entitled to choose its leader as the Prime Minister.
And therein lies the problem. David Cameron's Conservative party only holds 306 seats, 20 short of a majority (disregarding the fact the Sinn Fein MP's won't take their seats and the one ward, Thirsk & Malton, which hasn't yet elected an MP due to the death of a candidate). This means that the Conservative party cannot be said to represent the people.
This principle of a majority government is deeply enshrined in British democracy. Each bill, or law, that the government proposes is voted on by every MP. If less than half of the MP's vote in favour of the legislation then it is not passed and the law doesn't change. And it is exactly for this reason that minority governments are so ineffective.
Mr. Cameron had only one option if he wanted to form an effective, decisive government that represented the people, and that was to discuss with the leaders of other parties the possibilities of forming a coalition, thus making up the number of seats needed to form a majority. The most obvious choice was the Liberal Democrat party. If you combine both their seats together, they would have 363 seats, a comfortable majority of 37 seats.
So what's the problem, why wasn't that done last Friday? Well; the Tories and the Lib Dems have core values, policies, ways of doing things, which are completely opposed. For example, the Conservative party wants to raise the Inheritance Tax threshold to £1 million, this would only benefit people set to inherit between £325,000 and one million pounds, in other words, some of the richest people in our society. The Liberal Democrats on the other hand wanted to raise the threshold at which basic rate tax is paid to £10,000, which would benefit everyone earning over £6,475, some of the poorest people in our society.
Just these two manifesto pledges demonstrate how different the parties are. The Tories represent the values to the right of centre and the Lib Dems to the left. And although it may look as if the people haven't decisively voted in favour of any particular party, they have decisively voted for a neither right wing, nor a left wing government. A Lib Dem/Tory pact would represent exactly this.
What has been happening over the past few days is that Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has been talking with David Cameron trying to find concessions that both parties can agree on. As part of this process Mr. Clegg has also been in talks with the Labour party. Not with any real expectation that they could work with them to form a government, but to prove to the electorate that they considered every avenue.
The debates were no doubt heated, and certainly went on well into the night. Bear in mind that any deal is not just up to the leaders of the parties, but of their MP's and senior party members. One of the biggest concessions the Liberal Democrats wanted was a referendum on electoral reform, and this is exactly what many Tory members very much didn't want. There were also many Lib Dem members that felt a deal with the Conservatives was impossible as it went against what the two parties believed in.
But finally, after several days a deal has been struck. David Cameron will be the 12th Prime Minister since our Queen's coronation, Gordon Brown has resigned, not only as PM, but also as the leader of the Labour party. It has also been rumoured that Nick Clegg will be offered the post of deputy PM and that George Osborne will step aside and let Ken Clarke take the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer with the Liberal Democrat's Vince Cable as his deputy.
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