UK General Election Special
As you may know, the British Prime Minister recently announced that a General Election would be held in the UK on 4 July. Campaigning here is ramping up, so I am going to depart from our usual gardening theme this month and look at some of the policies (or lack of them) up for debate (or not). For non-UK readers, here is a brief summary of UK politics. For over 100 years, UK governments have been formed by either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party. The current government is Conservative; the predicted result of the upcoming election is a swing to Labour. The Conservative Party is right-leaning and is somewhat comparable to the US Republicans; the Labour Party is left-leaning and is somewhat comparable to the US Democrats. There are several minority parties who have no realistic prospect of winning a majority or forming a government; however, they may hold the balance of power in a “hung Parliament” where no party has an overall majority. Minority parties contesting this el...