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Uk General Election, 2005A general election in the United Kingdom will be held on May 5, 2005. The election will be for seats in the House of Commons and will therefore also decide which political party forms the country's government. Overview The governing Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Tony Blair, will be looking to secure a third consecutive term in office and to retain its large majority. The Conservative Party will be seeking to regain seats captured by both Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the 1997 election and to replace Labour in government, whilst the Liberal Democrats themselves will hope to make further gains from both sides and to become the Official Opposition. Many seats will be contested also by other parties; parties with current representation at Westminster include the Democratic Unionist Party, Health Concern, Plaid Cymru, Scottish National Party, Sinn Fin (who do not take their seats as they will not swear the oath of allegiance), Social Democratic and Labour Party and the Ulster Unionist Party. Parties that are not represented at Westminster, but have seats in the devolved assemblies and European Parliament include the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, United Kingdom Independence Party, the various national Green Parties, and the Scottish Socialist Party. A full list of parties having declared their intention to run can be found on the list of parties contesting the UK general election, 2005. Date Under the Constitution of the United Kingdom, dates for general elections are not fixed, and can be called by the government at short notice. Although a general election is not required to be held until 2006, on April 5, 2005 the Prime Minister announced that the election will be held on May 5 (see below). It is usual practice for Prime Ministers to 'go to the country for a renewed mandate' (call a general election) some time after the fourth anniversary of the previous election. In 2005, the Government will be returning to the poll slightly under four years into the parliamentary term, as the 2001 election was held on June 7, 2001, but that election had been delayed by one month to take account of the 2001 UK foot and mouth crisis. Governments with safe majorities in the House of Commons can call elections early when seeking a mandate for a change in policy. A government might also call an election sooner than is conventional if it feared that holding the election later would adversely affect its chances of winning, or if it wished to capitalise on the weakness of the opposition. The date of May 5 coincides with the date set for local elections for county councils in England and local councils in Northern Ireland. The latter had originally been scheduled to take place on May 18, but were brought forward by Northern Ireland Office ministers http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4191453.stm, adding to the speculation surrounding the May 5 date. The date was suggested on November 24, 2004 by the British newspaper The Sun. The political editor of The Sun, Trevor Kavanagh, is seen by many as "Mr. Blair's voice in Fleet Street", having correctly predicted the date of the 2001 general election for June 7, 2001 (which was also the same date as local elections in England and Northern Ireland). A general election campaign lasts for 17 working days (excluding weekends and bank holidays), this means that an election on May 5 had to be called on or before the required dissolution of Parliament on April 11, 2005. The election announcement The date of the general election was trailed by the news media for weeks. On Tuesday April 5, 2005, Tony Blair went to Buckingham Palace to ask Queen Elizabeth II for a dissolution of Parliament. The announcement had been expected on April 4, but after the death of Pope John Paul II on April 2, the announcement was delayed by a day as a mark of respect. Instead of campaigning (as was presumably originally planned), Tony Blair attended Vespers in memory of the pope at Westminster Cathedral on 4 April. Normal convention dictates that the Prime Minister visits the Queen at Buckingham Palace, then makes a formal announcement that the Queen has granted a dissolution before formally announcing the date of the election at an event later in the day. However, the first person to speak about the election was the Leader of the Opposition, Michael Howard (Conservative) soon afterwards by Charles Kennedy (Liberal Democrat) when they both launched their official campaigns. Following his visit to Buckingham Palace, Mr Blair returned to Downing Street and made the formal announcement of the calling of the election. Security and integrity of the ballot The period immediately before the 2005 general election has seen increased concern about the integrity of the electoral system in Britain. Postal voting has been permitted in United Kingdom elections since 1918. In 2000 after a recommendation by the Home Office Working Party on Electoral Procedures, supported by all parties, the law was changed so that applicants for a postal vote no longer had to state a reason why they were unable to vote in person. This means that postal voting is available on demand. On 4 April 2005, Richard Mawrey QC (sitting as a judge in an Election Court) declared the result of two wards in Birmingham from the 2004 local elections void by reason of "widespread fraud" in postal voting committed by the successful Labour candidates. Other local cases, most notably in Bradford, have seen accusations of postal voting frauds committed by other parties. Mawrey stated that he found the system of postal voting to be insecure and expressed his concerns about whether the government was intending to prevent fraud. Nick Raynsford, a Minister in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, stated to Parliament that the government would commit 10 million to improving postal ballot security. Pre-campaign In the run-up to the election the Labour Party circulated subscribers to its email contact list with posters it was considering using in the campaign. One of these, which was intended to support Labour accusations that the Conservatives had not fully costed their economic policies, featured the slogan "The day the Tory sums add up" together with images of flying pigs featuring the faces of the Conservative leader Michael Howard and Treasury spokesman Oliver Letwin. Both Howard and Letwin are Jewish and the Labour Party was accused of encouraging anti-semitism; the Labour Party denied any such implication. A separate poster depicted Howard as a hypnotist with a watch on a chain, and the caption "I can spend the same money twice". This poster was seen by some Conservatives as a depiction of either Shylock from the Merchant of Venice, or Fagin from Oliver Twist, and therefore also anti-semitic, although the Labour Party said it was intended to remind voters of the character of incompetent hypnotist Kenny Craig from the TV comedy show Little Britain. On March 24, 2005, The Times printed extracts from a tape recording made at a meeting of the Conservative Way Forward group in which Howard Flight, then Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, said that there was room for a Conservative government to make more savings on public expenditure than it was promising in its election campaign. Flight's statement was used by the Labour Party to justify its claim that the Conservatives were planning to cut government services, which had been greeted with scepticism by the media, and Flight immediately resigned his post, eventually to have the Conservative whip withdrawn. It later emerged that the tape recording had been made by a Labour Party member, giving rise to Conservative allegations that Labour was using illicit tactics. Seats in Scotland Legislation was passed by the UK Parliament in September 2004, which will come into effect upon the dissolution of the current UK Parliament, to break the linkage between UK Parliament constituencies and Scottish Parliament constituencies; therefore this election will mark a reduction of the number of constituencies for the UK Parliament. Scotland is currently over-represented in the Westminster Parliament on a per capita basis, and the number of Scottish MPs will be cut from 72 to 59. Although it is not possible to accurately calculate the pre-election balance of power within the 59 seats, it is estimated that, had the 2001 election taken place on the new boundaries, Labour would have won 46 seats, with the Liberal Democrats on 9 seats and the Scottish National Party on 4. That translates into a theoretical loss for Labour of 10 seats, with a trimming of the Liberal Democrat and SNP parliamentary ranks of one seat apiece. The arithmetic is however complicated by the fact that the boundary revision has thrown up a handful of seats that are notionally highly marginal. Despite the Conservatives winning Galloway and Upper Nithsdale as their sole Scottish seat at the last general election, the decision to create Dumfries and Galloway as a single constituency probably means that the party will also start with a deficit to overcome there. The election in Northern Ireland In Northern Ireland, the election looks likely to be dominated by a battle between the Ulster Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party to be the province's largest party in Parliament. Although the former won more MPs at the last General Election, defections have since reversed the position. Other elections in the province have shown both a shift in votes towards the DUP but also a collapse of support for the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland which is likely to be more marked in a first past the post election and thus which may work in the UUP's favour. In the Nationalist community, the election battle between Sinn Fin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party looks set to dominate. Other elections have shown a clear shift in support from the SDLP to Sinn Fin and if this is duplicated then some constituencies will change hands between the two, reducing the number of MPs who vote in Westminster. This is because Members of Parliament cannot formally take their seats until they swear allegiance to the Queen (which Sinn Fin members refuse to do). Composition of the House of Commons The House of Commons following the 2005 general election will contain 646 MPs (down from the current 659 due to the boundary changes mentioned above). This means that the results of the last election must be adjusted before they can be used as a guide to the parties' performance. The calculations (based on the 13 Scottish seats that will disappear; also ignoring defections and by-elections) suggest that the old House of Commons would be comprised thus: | colspan="2" | Party | Number of MPs | Adjustment | | tyle="background-color: #c00; width: 1px;"| | Labour | align="center"|403 | align="center"|−10 | | tyle="background-color: #339; width: 1px;"| | Conservative | align="center"|165 | align="center"|−1 | | tyle="background-color: #f90; width: 1px;"| | Liberal Democrat | align="center"|51 | align="center"|−1 | | tyle="background-color: #66c; width: 1px;"| | Ulster Unionist | align="center"|6 | align="center"| | | tyle="background-color: #c66; width: 1px;"| | Democratic Unionist | align="center"|5 | align="center"| | | tyle="background-color: #3c3; width: 1px;"| | Plaid Cymru | align="center"|4 | align="center"| | | tyle="background-color: #fc0; width: 1px;"| | Scottish National | align="center"|4 | align="center"|−1 | | tyle="background-color: #060; width: 1px;"| | Sinn Fin | align="center"|4 | align="center"| | | tyle="background-color: #9c9; width: 1px;"| | Social Democratic and Labour | align="center"|3 | align="center"| | | tyle="background-color: #999; width: 1px;"| | Health Concern | align="center"|1 | align="center"| | Thus, the Labour Party's overall majority is 160. In most parliamentary votes, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) tends to side with the Labour Party (thus boosting their majority by 6), and when you add in the non-presence of the Sinn Fin members, Labour's majority is (in theory) as high as 170. But in most practical terms, Labour's majority is seen as 160. The following are a list of possible outcomes based on a national uniform swing to the Conservative Party of: - < 6.5 %: Labour majority
- 6.5% - 8%: Hung parliament (Labour minority government)
- 8% - 9.5%: Hung parliament (Conservative minority government)
- > 9.5%: Conservative majority
In order for either the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats to form a government (gain more than 50% of the seats available in the House of Commons) they need to take votes from Labour - even a 100% swing from one party to the other would result in Labour holding 323 seats, to the other party's 300 (1 short of a Labour majority). To show what a challenge they face to form the next government, the Liberal Democrats need to achieve a 17.8% uniform swing from Labour, assuming the Conservative vote remains static. Another interesting point is that based on a national uniform swing from the Labour Party to the Liberal Democrats, for every seat gained by the Liberal Democrats from Labour, Labour loses 4 seats to the Conservatives (again assuming the Conservative vote remains static). Targets The below are not official targeted seats (no major party has yet published their list of seats as such) but are based on the results of the 2001 election; the seats listed are the ones in which the respective party came second, ranked by the percentage margin by which they lost - this is thus the swing needed for the respective party to take that seat. In general actual target seats will be determined by more recent election results such as the 2004 euro elections. The incumbent party is included in brackets after the constituency name. (Statistics calculated from http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/e01/results.htm) Opinion Polls Opinion polls are carried out almost every day during an election campaign and are usually reported by all the news media. The following lists opinion polls that have been taken recently. Notes - Restricted to those said who said they were "certain to vote"
External links 2005-6
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