Like many election years, 2015 was a strange time for British politics. But the vote, which put the Tories in power, was only the prelude. Things got truly bizarre in the latter half of the year when the opposition stopped showing up for work.
Up until May, 2015 was completely dominated by the electoral campaign. The unpredictability of the election meant that the contest was feverish, at times quite nasty, and pretty relentless.
But then a really strange phase began. On May 7, British voters rewarded the Conservative Party with an unexpected parliamentary majority. Until the results of a shock exit poll were announced just after 10 p.m., it had looked as though a hung parliament was practically inevitable.
Many thought Labor would govern at the head of some complex coalition of parties. Few, if any, predicted the Conservatives would win enough parliamentary seats to govern alone. But win they did, coming away with a majority of 12.
Labor Party on the Brink
If the Conservatives’ majority suggested the return to the old certainties of single-party government, everything else seemed utterly changed.
Labor’s humiliating defeat, the decimation of the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party (SNP)’s insurgency, and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) breakthrough that failed to materialize unleashed a new, though hard to define, political dynamic. The shape of this new order is only just beginning to become clear, but the impact is significant—and mostly beneficial to the Conservatives.
