Boulder to London

This summer will mark two years of life in the UK.  One of the most painful things about living over here is how generally unaware American’s  are about what is going on in the rest of the world (me included).  Please not there are a significant number of Americans for which this does not apply, but as a generalisation, it holds pretty true.  I can’t count the number of conversations I’ve been in over the past 18 months where I’ve been embarrassingly unable to contribute because I simply didn’t know.  It’s worse when the discussion is about the history of the US or American politics.  Since this year is an election year in the UK, I thought I’d take some time to learn about the political landscape over here and use the blog to share what I find out.

I started with the fundamentals to ensure I have a strong foundation to work from.  Here are a few of the things that are important:

1) The UK has two dominant parties, the Conservative, also called the Tory Party and the Liberal or Labour Party.  Currently the Labour Party is in power with Gordon Brown as the Prime Minister.  David Cameron is the leader of the Labour Party and will face Gordon Brown in the election.  A third party, the Liberal Democrats is led by Nick Clegg and will be important in the election as neither party is likely to have a significant majority in the legislative branch of government (House of Lords and House of Commons) and therefore, having an alliance or coalition with the Liberal Democrats will be very important to getting legislation passed.

2) I still don’t totally understand this part, but elections are not planned on a regular basis as they are in the US.  As near as I can tell, the rule is that there must be an election every 5 years.  I believe it is up to the Prime Minister to call the election, and it can be done at a time when it is to their party’s advantage.  The election this year has to be on or before the 3rd of June as the last election was in 2005.

3) There is not a long campaign period as in the US.  The leader of each party is generally (always?) the candidate that is put forward when the election is called and therefore there is no need for a primary.  It sounds like as election time nears, the tone of speeches and the frequency of communication with the public increases to ensure that each candidate’s message gets out.

I’ll try to add a bit more each week as I learn more and as election time nears.  I’ve also put in a link to an article that explains a bit more about this year’s election.

Click here