EDITORIAL: Britain's indecisive poll

The result of Britain's election was a "hung parliament," a situation in which neither major party managed to win an overall majority. This must be evidence of just how much voters agonized over which party to choose for their government.

Britain uses a single-seat constituency electoral system, in which the candidate with the most votes in the constituency is the winner.

The problem with this system is that there are many wasted votes, but nevertheless, it is easier for the party with the most votes to gain an overall majority, and tends to make way for a change of government and more active politics.

This system was one of the driving forces of British politics that allowed for epoch-making changes of government, like the birth of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government that aimed for the rebirth of Britain, or the rise of Tony Blair's Labor government with its "Third Way" concept.

Even under this system designed to concentrate the seats within two parties, the latest election did not produce a clear-cut majority. This has not happened since 1974.

In this election, the focus was whether or not to have a change of government, from Labor to Tory, for the first time in 13 years.

The Conservative Party gained the most seats in the House of Commons, beating Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labor Party, and is now trying to form a government. However, on its own, it will end up as a minority government. On the other hand, the Liberal Democrats, who were popular as the third option, lost seats while increasing their percentage of the vote.

It seems voters wavered between dissatisfaction with the two major parties, and their uncertainty towards the third party.

British voters hugely mistrust the two major parties. Last year, amid the economic crisis, when people were struggling and losing their jobs, an expenses scandal among members of parliament came to light.

Moreover, the Labor government chose to take part in the Iraq war despite the war's unpopularity in Britain. The Tories also supported the war. Nor do the two parties offer that much difference in their solutions to the lingering recession.

However, it seems British voters mistrust not just the two parties, but also the two-party system itself. A party that governs as it chooses based on its majority can forget the electoral mandate, and the members eventually start thinking of themselves as the ruling class. The people apparently felt that the expenses scandal, as well as the behavior of the two parties in the Iraq war was evidence of this.

In addition, the reality is this: The two parties, as well as the single-seat constituency system that supported the two parties, are no longer able to absorb the widening diversity of views and widening disparities brought on by globalization. For some time, the Liberal Democrats have campaigned on this issue, pushing for the adoption of proportional representation.

Britain's democracy has reached a crossroad.

The British political system has always been a role model for Japan. The country saw a change of government last year from the Liberal Democratic Party to the Democratic Party of Japan, but the political landscape also overlaps with Britain. Both of the two major parties are causing mistrust in politics and estranging the electorate.

The British election highlighted the people's mistrust in the two-party system, as well as the limitations of the single-seat constituency system. Japan's political parties should take all of this to heart, these problems are relevant here, too.

--The Asahi Shimbun, May 8