General election produces politicalearthquake in BritainBy Chris
Marsden and Julie Hyland9 May 2015
The Conservative Party has won a narrow majority afterThursdays
General Election. With 331 seats inWestminster out of 650, it will
not have to rely on supportfrom Northern Irelands Democratic
Unionist Party or theLiberal Democrats, as some had predicted. The
result owes nothing to popular support. TheConservatives polled
approximately 36.9 percent of thevote, a small rise on 2010, but
due to Britainsfirst-past-the-post constituency-based system it
increasedits number of seats by 24. This is an election that Labour
lost rather than one thatthe Tories won. There was actually a swing
of 15 percentagainst the two governing parties, the Conservatives
andLiberal Democrats, who won 59 percent between them in2010 and
only 44 percent Tuesday. But the entire brunt ofthis fell on the
Liberal Democrats, who won only eightseats, compared to 57 in 2010.
Labour saw a slight increase of its overall vote and wona dozen
additional seats in England, but this was morethan offset by its
spectacular collapse in its formerstronghold of Scotland, where it
was wiped out by theScottish National Party (SNP). There is now a
solitaryLabour MP in the whole of Scotlandand just oneConservative
and one Liberal Democratas the SNPswept the board, securing 56
seats compared with six in2010. The stark contrast between the fate
of the two parties isprimarily because the SNP made a pitch to
anti-austeritysentiment, whereas Labour did not. Labour leader Ed
Miliband centred his electioncampaign on an assertion that his
party would be a moresensible advocate of austerity, which would
still allowfor some growth in highly circumscribed areas.
Hecombined a pledge for a budget responsibility lock witha promise
to clamp down on immigration, to defend theEuropean Union and
maintain Britains role as a leadingmilitary power.
This enabled the SNP to exploit widespread hostility
toWestminster, especially to Labour itself, and to channelthis
sentiment behind its nationalist agenda. In this it wasaided and
abetted by the pseudo-left groups such as theScottish Socialist
Party and Solidarity Scotland, whoendorsed an SNP vote. The SNP is
now the third largest party in Westminster,with major ramifications
for the future survival of theUnited Kingdom as a unitary state. In
manyconstituencies in Scotland the swing against Labour waswell
over 30 percent. High voter turnout in Scotland masks a national
figurethat would otherwise have been lower than in 2010. The
election has claimed the scalps of three partyleaders. The Labour
Party is decapitated. Within hours of theresult, Miliband resigned
as the anticipated last-minutesurge to Labour failed to
materialise. Deputy leaderHarriet Harman said she would step down
as soon as asuccessor was elected. The partys shadow chancellor,
EdBalls, and Douglas Alexander, shadow foreign secretary,lost their
seats. Labour was unable to offset its losses in Scotland withany
significant gains in Tory marginals and its vote evenin major urban
conurbations was poorleaving it almost100 seats adrift of the
Tories in its worst result since1987. The UK Independence Party is
the third most popularparty on 13 percent, having picked up support
from boththe Conservatives and Labour. Nonetheless, with around4
million votesnearly triple the total of the SNPit tookjust one
Westminster seat. Nigel Farage resigned as UKIP leader after he
failed towin his Thanet constituency. UKIPs main donor, ArronBanks,
had called for a vote for the Tories in the seatbecause Prime
Minister David Cameron has pledged tohold a referendum on British
membership of the
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European Union by 2017. The result for UKIP mirrors the success
of the SNP, notin its right-wing nostrums, but from the
essentialstandpoint of the dangerous cultivation of
nationalistsentiment. Liberal Democrat leader and former Deputy
PrimeMinister Nick Clegg also resigned, after his party
sufferedwhat he described as a cruel and punishing night. Cleggonly
narrowly managed to retain his own seat due totactical voting by
Tories, with the majority ofConservative gains coming from former
LiberalDemocrat seats. All other leading Liberal Democratfigures,
such as former Business Secretary Vince Cableand former Chief
Secretary to the Treasury DannyAlexander, lost their seatsleaving a
parliamentary groupof just eight Liberal Democrats who could travel
toWestminster in a minibus. Caroline Lucas remains the Green Partys
sole MP,despite the party quadrupling its national share of the
votedue to its nominally left programme. Britains ruling elite got
the result they had wanted.Virtually all the media and leading
business figuresinsisted that a Tory majority was necessary for
thestability of the financial marketsthe only constituencythat
counts. But it is a pyrrhic victory. It heads a government thatnot
only might preside over a British exit from theEuropean Union, but
also the break-up of the UnitedKingdom. Moreover, it commands the
support of just 22percent of the electorate, under conditions in
which it ispledged to further savage cuts that will devastate the
livesof millions. The overriding message from the election is that,
for thevast majority of people who sought change, it will notcome
through parliament and certainly not from theLabour Party. Labour
is a bureaucratic organisation with no real basein the working
class and no ability at all to make apopular appeal to their
fundamental concerns. They arenot seen as an opposition tendency,
but rather as a palecopy of the Tories. It has already responded to
defeat with complaints thatit drifted too far to the left and calls
to recapture the glorydays of Tony Blair. There has never been an
occasion where the gapbetween the sentiment of the broad mass of
thepopulation and the structures of official politics has beenso
vast. This is only the ideological reflection of the gulfwhich has
opened up between the super-rich oligarchy,
who dictate the policies of all the major parties, and
theworking class. This situation will have explosive
politicalconsequences. Parliamentary democracy is in a state of
advanceddecay and cannot be revived. The working class
mustintervene independently and in its own interests if it is
tocombat the ongoing destruction of jobs, wages and
socialconditions and the growing danger of militarism and war. It
can only do so on a socialist programme. The Socialist Equality
Party stood two candidates in thegeneral election, Katie Rhodes in
Glasgow Central andDavid OSullivan in Holborn & St. Pancras,
London.Rhodes secured 58 votes and OSullivan 108. Thepurpose of the
SEPs campaign was to raise the necessityof a new socialist movement
of the working class, onebased on the fight for a workers
government in Britainwithin the framework of a United Socialist
States ofEurope and a world socialist federation. The prerequisite
for the development of such amovement is the historical and
political education of themost advanced and self-sacrificing
elements in theworking class, especially the young. In the course
of our campaign, the SEP distributedthousands of election
manifestos and spoke to thousandsmore. Our candidates addressed
almost a dozen hustingsand wrote extensively on the programme and
classcharacter of all the major parties, as well as thepseudo-left
groups that gravitate around them. Most importantly, the SEP placed
the InternationalMay Day Online Rally against imperialist war,
hosted bythe World Socialist Web Site, at the centre of
itscampaign. Two highly successful meetings were held inGlasgow and
London to listen to the event. The outcome of the election is a
stark confirmation ofthe programme and perspective advanced by the
SEP. Weurge workers and young people to respond by taking
thedecision to join our party.
To contact the WSWS and theSocialist Equality Party visit:
