Nevertheless, Brown’s popularity and that of his party continued to wane as a general election, called for May 6, 2010, approached. The campaign brought a novelty to the British general election campaign—televised debates between the leaders of the three main parties: Brown of the Labour Party, David Cameron of the Conservative Party, and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats. Clegg’s outstanding performance in the first debate resulted in a surge in the preelection polls for the Liberal Democrats—who passed Labour to challenge the Conservative lead and to create both unprecedentedly high expectations for the Liberal Democrats and doubt as to whether any party would be able to secure enough seats to form a majority government.
British general election of 2005Results of the British general election held May 5, 2005.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
In the event, the Liberal Democrats actually obtained fewer seats in 2010 than in the 2005 election. The Conservatives finished as the largest party, winning 306 seats, but they finished 20 seats shy of a majority. The resulting “hung parliament” ironically placed the Liberal Democrats as potentially holding the balance of power. Labour finished with 258 seats, a fall of 91 seats over the 2005 election. When negotiations to form a Liberal Democratic–Labour coalition failed, the Liberal Democrats joined the Conservatives in a coalition government led by Cameron, who became prime minister on May 11, and Clegg, who became deputy prime minister. First-past-the-post referendum
In October the government announced a five-year austerity plan aimed at reducing the country’s massive deficit, which had been fueled by bank bailouts and stimulus spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and resultant recession. The plan incorporated some of the British government’s deepest spending cuts since World War II, including reductions to welfare entitlements and the dismissal of up to 500,000 public-sector employees, as well as phasing in a pension eligibility age increase from 65 to 66 four years earlier than had been planned. In December Parliament voted to raise the ceiling on university tuition from the existing cap of £3,290 (about $5,200) to £9,000 (about $14,000), prompting a series of demonstrations and causing dissension in the coalition government. The Liberal Democrats had campaigned against the tuition hike during the general election, and some Liberal Democrat MPs continued to oppose it when it came to a vote. The rift in the coalition widened following Conservative opposition to the Liberal-Democrat-supported referendum on a proposal to replace the country’s first-past-the-post election method with the alternative vote. The vote on the referendum, which was soundly rejected by the British public, was taken as part of local elections in May 2011, in which the Conservatives’ share of English council constituencies increased moderately but that of the Liberal Democrats plummeted, to the benefit of Labour. Although there were some calls for Clegg to step down, support for him among Liberal Democrats generally remained strong. The election also resulted in a sweeping victory for the Scottish National Party, which secured the first majority government in the history of the Scottish Parliament, emboldening First Minister Alex Salmond to announce that he would seek to hold a referendum on independence.
Clegg, Nick; Cameron, DavidDeputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (left) with Prime Minister David Cameron, May 12, 2010.Prime Minister's Office, Crown copyright
Intervention in Libya
As the outbreak of popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa known as the Arab Spring unfolded in early 2011, the revolt in Libya and Libyan ruler Muammar al-Qaddafi’s brutal repression of it became a particular focus of British attention. Although Cameron was criticized for the less-than-efficient removal of British nationals from Libya and for a botched effort by British special forces to contact the anti-Qaddafi rebels, he remained adamant in his criticism of Qaddafi and in his call for foreign intervention to protect the rebels from the Qaddafi regime’s superior forces, most notably with the enforcement of a no-fly zone. Cameron and French Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy were instrumental in steering the UN Security Council to authorize military action on March 17. Beginning March 19, a coalition of U.S. and European forces with warplanes and cruise missiles attacked targets in Libya in an effort to disable Libya’s air force and air defense systems so that the UN-authorized no-fly zone could be imposed. On March 27 NATO officially took command of military operations in Libya previously directed by the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. News of the World hacking scandal
In April 2011 much of the world’s attention was directed at Britain for the wedding in London of Prince William (the grandson of Queen Elizabeth and second in line to the throne after his father, Prince Charles) to Catherine Middleton (see Prince William and Catherine Middleton: The Royal Wedding of 2011).
Prince William and Catherine, duke and duchess of CambridgePrince William and his bride, Catherine, leaving Westminster Abbey after their wedding, April 29, 2011.Tom Hevezi/AP
In July a scandal that had been smoldering since 2005 broke out in full flame when the News of the World" class="md-crosslink">News of the World, one of the flagship newspapers of Rupert Murdoch’s News International media empire, ceased publication after it became clear that a number of the paper’s reporters and editors had engaged in or condoned the illegal hacking of telephone voice mails of some 4,000 Britons, including a child murder victim, the families of soldiers killed while serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, celebrities, politicians, and the British royal family. An earlier investigation had failed to reveal the extent of these violations of privacy (prompting later charges of law enforcement ineptitude and corruption) but led to the resignation of the editor of News of the World, Andy Coulson, in 2007. It did not prevent him from becoming the communications chief for Cameron when he took office, however. When the scandal began to grow, in January 2011 Coulson stepped down. By the middle of July, in addition to the shuttering of News of the World, the scandal had resulted in the resignation of Rebekah Brooks, the politically powerful chief executive officer of News International, and in the withdrawal of Murdoch’s bid to buy a controlling share of the BSkyB satellite television channel. It also brought about the convening of a number of special parliamentary hearings and commissions. The 2011 riots, the European sovereign debt crisis, and Cameron’s veto of changes to the Lisbon Treaty
On the night of August 6 a different sort of firestorm broke out when a protest against the killing of a young man by police earlier in the week erupted in widespread rioting in the North London area of Tottenham. In the succeeding days, riots, looting, and arson, mostly by young people, escalated wildly and became the worst rioting that the capital had seen in decades. The riots spread not only to other areas of Greater London but also to other British cities including Liverpool, Birmingham, and Bristol. Largely as a result of the increased deployment of police, however, the riots abated quickly. In the ensuing months, legal authorities used video footage of the events to arrest looters.