Election coverage: UK elections 101

If you know me, you know I love politics. That's why I'm planning to cover the UK General Election in a few posts over the next month. Hopefully you'll find it even a small fraction of how interesting I find it. Plus I think Americans should follow UK elections like the British follow US elections--there is a mutual interest, after all. (See above photo. Apparently there's also mutual necktie-choosing.)

We just found out for sure today that there will be a general election in the UK on May 6. Yep, that's right--there's only a month for the candidates to campaign and for the population to decide their votes.


Prime Minister Gordon Brown (above) is the one who decided on the May 6 date. General elections have to take place at least every 5 years, but election dates are fluid, set by the Prime Minister. PMs usually try to time the elections during periods of greatest popularity for their party. In Brown's case his government has been so unpopular that he's waited until the last possible second--the last election was in May 2005.

So after the PM sets the election date, Parliament will DISSOLVE (on April 12), and every single member of the House of Commons (650) has to be re-elected in order to retain her/his seat. Interesting note: the dissolution of Parliament is one of the Queen's actual powers/duties.


The PM isn't directly elected by the public. Gordon Brown, for example, was elected by the people as the Member of Parliament for his constituency (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath in Scotland), and the Labour Party chose him as their leader (when Tony Blair resigned, you'll remember). So the party that wins a majority of seats on May 6 gets to appoint a Prime Minister. Fascinating, huh?


More to come on the candidates and parties and issues and debates and all the other fun stuff!