Op-Ed Contributors

UK gets change but not at cost of stability

By Yu Xiang (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-18 07:50

Gordon Brown's "heroic" resignation as Labour Party leader paved the way for Conservative leader David Cameron to enter No. 10 Downing Street and relieve the election labor pain that the United Kingdom was suffering from.

But the rarity of a coalition government in the UK and the different stances of the coalition partners on immigration, taxation and the European Union (EU) have triggered widespread speculation over the direction British politics will take. Will the coalition government of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats be able to lead the country effectively?

The world is busy talking about the change the UK election has brought about, but the "unchanged" theme running through the country's politics deserves equal if not more attention.

It is fine to seek change, but stability is no less important. The election indeed brought about a string of changes. Leaders of the three main parties took part in televized debates for the first time in Britain. For the first time since 1974, the largest party in parliament failed to win enough seats to form a government on its own. The election broke the trend of the Labour and Conservative parties taking turns to form a government since the end of World War II. And the Barack Obama-style campaign slogans and strategies, televized debates and a coalition government made people feel sterile.

The Conservatives were expected to win the election and they did. But if this year's voter turnout - which rose from 61.4 percent in 2005 to 65.2 percent - indicated that the British electorate wanted change, the result threw up a different scenario. People voted neither to make Conservatives the clear winners nor to abandon the Labour completely. In short, they vacillated between seeking change and maintaining stability.

The British seem to have adopted a "prudent" attitude toward the Tories' promise to bring about change. The electorate may have been confused further by the main parties' actions: They kept "snatching" each other's policies during the campaign as a result, left-wing parties became "less left" and right-wing parties "less right". In the end the British public got a hung parliament leading to a coalition government, which will find it difficult to maintain a stable Cabinet, promote reform or issue new policies.

The priority of the new government is overcoming the global financial crisis as quickly as possible. The Conservatives did lash out at Labour for "misguiding the country" during 13 years of its rule. They said the Labour's policies caused economic recession and gave rise to many a social problem. To right the Labour wrongs, the Tories promised to raise taxes on banks, reform the financial supervision system and cut government expenditure by 6 billion pounds. But the sad truth is that neither the Tories nor the Labour Party has the power and wherewithal to cure the economy completely, especially because of the record budget deficit of 167 billion pounds in 2009 (equivalent to that of Greece), and more than 2.5 million unemployed (the highest in 14 years).

But since the Labour did a good job of tackling the global financial crisis there's reason to believe that the new government will follow the existing policy of economic stimulus and employment generation, and make only marginal changes such as granting people more supervisory power over members of parliament.