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You are > Home > Brown to get back in power
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Thursday, May 06, 2010
Brown to get back in power
BY FINBARR SLATTERY
THE nearest country to Ireland to hold an election for members of parliament is, of course, Great Britain, which comprises England, Scotland, Wales and those six Irish counties in the northern part of this island we live in which are under British rule.
There are 646 members elected from single seat constituencies and the successful candidate is the person who gets the highest first preference votes. Be at the head of the posse after the first count and you are elected.
This differs from the proportional representation (PR) system we have here at home – this was devised in Europe in the mid 19th century to guarantee minority groups more representation than was possible under the majority or plurality system.
Our system makes elections more interesting for you could actually end up at the top of the poll and not be elected which has happened.
The 646 members elected meet in the House of Commons which is the most powerful house of parliament in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland which is another name given to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The House of Commons was the less powerful house in the UK until 1911 when the Reform Bill of that year gave it the power to override the House of Lords.
The most famous Irish person to grace the House of Commons was a Kerryman – one Daniel O’Connell, The Liberator, who was born on 6 August 1775 near Caherciveen.
He was one of our great leaders. The main street in our capital city bears his name and the church in his hometown has the unique distinction of bearing his name and is the only church in the world named after a layman.
O’Connell was a lawyer by profession. He gradually became involved in the struggle for Catholic Emancipation.
After helping win passage of the 1829 Emancipation Act, which allowed Irish Catholics to serve in the British Parliamentm he was elected to the House of Commons where he made quite a name for himself as an orator of repute.
That’s a bit of history that I expect will interest readers of The Kingdom but to return to the task at hand – on the day after tomorrow one of the most baffling elections ever is due to take place in the UK and the task on hand is to try and forecast what the eventual outcome will be.
The best forecast of any election that I have seen was by John Healy. Writing in his column as backbencher in The Irish Times, he headed his column on the Saturday before an Irish general election: Will it be 71 or 72?
The election duly took place on a Wednesday and the following Saturday he could have still given his column the same heading which he remarked on because there was still a recount going on in the Longford/Westmeath constituency which resulted in Fianna Fáil’s Paddy Lenihan – Brian Lenihan’s grandfather – beating Fine Gael’s General Sean McEoin by four votes giving the Fianna Fail party 72 seats in Dáil Éireann so the difference between FF having 71 or 72 candidates elected to the Dáil was actually only four votes out of the million or so cast on election day.
How will the cookie crumble? That is the baffling question I am faced with as I start doing some research for my forecast of the May 6 election in the UK, on Monday, April 26. Here are the headings in the election news on the four English papers as I write this column:
Clegg goes public on coalition and looks to the Tories: The Guardian.
Splits emerge in Labour’s election strategy: The Independent
Cameron smash and grab raid on Labour: Daily Telegraph
Labour in turmoil over dissenters: The Times
There are a lot of complicated clues but which one if any is likely to bear fruit? Watching election coverage on TV, Gordon Brown continually comes across to be more like the man on the street than either of the other two and that’s bound to have some bearing on the result.
Harry Truman won the 1948 Presidential Election in the US against all the odds because the ordinary voter saw himself to be more like Harry than his rival Tom Dewey and that surely was the winning factor in that election.
When the uncommitted voters go to the polls next Thursday, quite a number of them cold see themselves to be more like Brown than Cameron or Clegg and vote for him.
After all that the die is cast and this is how I forecast the number of seats the three parties will get leaving out Unionists, Sinn Fein, Scottish Nationals and others:
* Labour: 300
* Conservatives: 240
* Liberal Democrats: 80
Now that I have nailed my colours to the mast you’ll see how I fared in the early hours of Friday morning or likely later that day.
If I’m right, then both Labour and Conservative will be denied an overall majority and Nick Clegg will be given the power to decide whether it will be a Conservative or Labour government that will hold office in the UK after the election.
I expect he will opt for Labour and Gordon Brown will continue as Prime Minister with Nick Clegg as Deputy PM.
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