We have a new prime minister! I honestly don’t know whether this is a good or bad thing yet but it’s a relief that something has finally been decided. The UK has been caught up in a political whirlwind for the last few months – it’s strange that it’s all we have been talking about!
Thursday the 6th of May was Election Day and there was a lot of excitement leading up to it. We’ve definitely learnt a lot from the way America’s elections take place – for example, a few weeks ago the leaders of our main political parties had live TV debates together for the first time and have been campaigning in a way that got normal people here involved. As a result, we had a large turnout of voters and ordinary people seemed to be getting interested in the elections for the first time.
I think one of the reasons that this election was different from the others is because there was no clear front runner – we had no idea who was going to win. And this year, even once all of the votes had been counted – there was no clear winner! There was a lot of confusion as no single party got the majority vote to govern the UK by itself – we have what we call a ‘hung’ parliament (for the first time since 1974) which means parties have to work together if they want to form a new government.
Gordon Brown resigned after being Prime Minister for 3 years. He visited Buckingham Palace and asked the Queen’s permission to leave his position and then David Cameron, leader of the party with more votes (but not enough to win by himself!) was invited to the Palace to form a new government.
Cameron has decided to join forces with another party so that their votes can be added together – this is not something that has happened successfully before so there is a lot of uncertainty about how this ‘hung’ parliament will work. We really don’t know what the new Prime Minister has in store for us now that he has moved into 10 Downing Street but hopefully the UK’s new found interest in politics will continue!
(Photo from www.wordpress.com)