Excellent article from the British version of the Economist on why the election, in some sense, represented a loss for all three parties. Many of their basic conclusions are one's I've traced, but I'll quickly summarize them:
1) That the New Labour electoral majority is crumbling: on both its right and left
2) But neither the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives seem to have come up with a demographic formula to replace it
3) The Conservatives basically didn't gain any new voters this election, and are still miles from power because they aren't competitive outside the South of England. In the North and Midlands (to say nothing of Scotland and Wales), they in many ways did worse than in 2001. To illustrate this point, the Liberal Democrats are now the second party in many of these seats, which is probably not so much an indicator of the Liberal Democrats imminence, but rather of the Tories distance from imminence.
4) The Liberal Democrats made some gains at the expense of Labour particularly, but by positioning themselves to Labour's left this election, they hurt their ability to simultaneously attack the Tories. As is patently clear, the Lib Dems have to decide what they want to be: a left alternative to Labour, or a more centrist party, competing directly for the votes of (whatever this means) Middle England (albeit with a different appeal to voters than Labour - ie social and cultural liberalism, fiscal conservatism, as opposed to Labour authoritarian nanny-statism)
The Economist also uses public spending vs. taxation vis-a-vis regional disparities as part of its explanation (reminiscent of the whole red state/blue state discussion, except that in Britain, the parts of the nation that receive a raw deal at the hands of the state vote for the right wing alternative - but then again, since I don't think the US Republican Party is conservative, maybe there is more to this than meets the eye: paging Sterling Newberry) All in all, a very good piece. Go check it out.
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