British Election

British Election

In the UK, the debate between the three frontrunners for the upcoming election for Prime Minister- current Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the Labour Party, David Cameron of the Conservative Party, and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats party- has rearranged the conventional expectations of who will become a frontrunner come election day. Brown, who was originally expected to sweep the race, has been surpassed both by current leader Cameron and, shockingly, by Clegg, who was never expected to be relevant in the general election. Suffering through a mild controversy this week, Brown was unable to bounce back and retake the debate in a way that would have asserted his power as a candidate, rather, he allowed Clegg to engage Cameron in a volatile and image-assisting conversation, effectively shutting Brown out of the argument.

Currently, though election-day projections may argue otherwise, Clegg is the new runner-up to Cameron, leading to a possibility of a Liberal Democrat victory, which has not happened in the UK in years. The Conservative Party has gone through a lot of controversy in the last few years for various comments and positions that have been seen by some as overly mean or intolerant, and this along with Brown’s recent verbal blunder when he called an older woman “bigoted,” the Liberal Democrats may have finally been given their chance.
A Liberal Democratic win may be the best thing for Britain, who was hit hard by the economic crisis and who has started to investigate into the Goldman Sachs fraud along with the United States. The Liberal Democrats would bring a new wave of regulation to the British banks and would possibly be able to prevent such wide-scale banking fraud to occur again in the UK. Still, it is likely that Cameron will win the office, ensuring that any efforts to regulate will be eschewed and quite possibly reversed.