Does your bellwether go "Woo, Pig! Sooiee!"?

This farmer in Kent hopes his porcine racers will be accurate in picking the next Prime Minister. (From the BBC South East.)

The Kentish Bellwether?

Prime Minister Gordon Brown officially kicked off his re-election campaign, not from the steps of 10 Downing or his figurative front porch in Kirkcaldy, but in a plush first-class car on Southeastern's High Speed Train One through the North Downs of Kent.

Relying on the 21st century's version of a whistle stop tour, Brown made known the importance of gaining the votes of constituencies along the Thames estuary. This morning's Observer features an analysis of Brown's first campaign tour on Tuesday. From the neighbourhoods and storefronts spread along the Essex & Surrey banks of south and east London, to the estuary towns on the Medway and Channel coast, the key to gaining the mandate for the next government, be it by outright majority or the main party in a hung parliament.

Many of these constituencies – Hammersea, Dartford, Hastings and Rye, Chatham and Aylesford, Dover — Tony Blair's New Labour surprisingly picked up when they handed John Major the worst loss for the Conservatives in 91 years. And these seats, along with several others identified by The Times as seats the Tories must win for David Cameron to outright call 10 Downing home, form what could be one of several candidates for the title "Bellwether of Britain". Much like Missouri and Ohio for US elections, these South East constituencies embody much of what encompasses "Middle Britain": a mix of post-industrial towns that still support Labour, rural villages that embrace Conservatives, and a pool of university-educated youth eager to support the Liberal Democrats or any third party they deem virtuous of their vote (especially the Greens in the case of Brighton Pavilion). In these constituencies, families are looking for answers to pressing issues like the economy, immigration, and integration with the EU, looking for the future MP that will be happy to answer to and serve their neighbours and communities in Westminster.

So are the marginal constituencies of Kent, the fabled Garden of England, a viable candidate to be the Bellwether of England? Perhaps. Working in its favour is Dartford, site of the critical Thames crossing that (by way of the A282) completes the M25 beltway around London. Since 1964, Dartford's MP has always been with the party that formed the majority. And following the ill-conceived urban design patterns of the American suburb, Kent and its many commuter routes has slowly evolved into a coastal chain of exurban towns just over an hour away from London. These marginal constituencies could be recited in the same breath as Gladstone, Mo., Bala Cynwyd, Pa., or East Liverpool, Ohio.

On the flip side, however, is the local structure, but that too can lend support to the claim. Last year, the Conservatives achieved a near-monopoly on the county council, reducing Labour to just two of Kent's 84 council seats and leaving the main opposition party with seven. And The Times' rather generous predictions (by way of betting firm Ladbrokes) has all of Kent turning bluer than Papa Smurf next month. This while American bellwethers tend to have an even mix of Republicans and Democrats in Congressional representation.

Kent has historically been a stronghold for the Conservatives, with Labour holding pockets of support in port towns and villages adjacent to former collieries and Lib Dems collecting support in other pockets. Likewise in the 19th century, Missouri was a reliable Democrat stronghold. Willard Duncan Vandiver, the congressman famous for implying Missouri as the Show-Me State, said in that same quote that Missouri was a state that raised Democrats along with corn, cotton and cockleburs. And in the 1860 election (where Missouri was the only state that gave all its electors to Stephen A. Douglas) several counties recorded no votes for eventual winner Abraham Lincoln. But that didn't stop Missouri from gaining bellwether status and wearing it as a badge of honor.

Throughout the 20th century, the Show-Me State became more cosmopolitan, with expanding suburbs around Kansas City and St. Louis, the development of vibrant college cities in Columbia and Fulton. A solid religious conservative base gained footing in Springfield and the Ozarks, and a storied mining presence, fused with a heritage of French Catholicism, continued in the Lead Belt of St. François and Madison counties. And in the Northern Plans, several communities, many of them depleted of populations following the consolidation of farming operations and the shuttering of their only blue-collar employer, still shudder at the thought of electing a Republican to local office, despite showing the same right-wing religious fervency as the Ozarks. And Kent is among the places where similar change is occurring.

A continued mix of pan-European commerce, London suburbanites and hyper-commuters, union legacies from centuries of operating ports, collieries, and shipyards, all wedged inbetween historic farmlands and estates, and infused with a multitude of ethnicities, give Kent the character that could generate Britain's very own bellwether. And come 6 May, BBC's legendary swingometer may very well sway with plenty of Kentish weight on the arrow.

Avian foot-in-mouth disease outbreak in Scotland wipes out Labour candidate

The Prime Minister had to deviate from his prepared campaign speech Friday to issue a condemnation of the actions of his own party's candidate.

The Scottish Labour Party has yanked Stuart MacLennan from the ballot in Moray, located along its namesake firth in northern Scotland. MacLennan was found to have made various derogatory comments on his Twitter account, calling Speaker John Bercow and opposition party leaders David Cameron and Nick Clegg various names, referring to elderly voters as "coffin dodgers", and bragging about his alcohol consumption while insulting the whisky distilleries in his own constituency. This dismissal only serves to help the current MP for Moray: Angus Robertson, leader of the Scottish National Party's Westminster Delegation.

Gee, it's not a good idea to post crap like that on Twitter when Sky News is following your every word (well, was before your account was deleted!)

How would this Web site gauge our Congressional Districts?

A third resource worth perusing during this month of campaigning is a Web site pointing out flaws in the first-past-the-post system that the UK has used to elect members to Parliament for years (and what several other nations have been using as well). Vote Power has calculated how much weight one person's vote has by constituency.

The more volatile a seat is (how often the seat changes hands, margin of victory, population of the district, etc.), the more weight a vote has. On the extremes, Vote Power has determined that the reformed constituency of Arfon in North West Wales has the most sway on the overall vote result, with just over the equivalent of 1.3 times a single vote. The worst constituency is also a new district, Merseyside's Knowsley, where it would take 50,000 voters to make up the moving power of one voter. That's because according to the figures Vote Power has shown, about 70 percent of residents in are believed to have voted for the Labour candidates in 2005.

In terms of constituencies that existed in 2005, the western Wales county constituency of Ceredigion has the most might with 1.220 (4.83 times the national average of 0.253), while Easington in County Durham ranks the lowest, also at 0.002.

While marginal seats are noted for having the most powerful votes in determining the election (it's suggested that despite the anger at Parliament, at least 60 percent of seats will return candidates from the same party), they also wind up having the most "wasted votes". That is, votes not counting toward the winning candidate. In the Labour-strongholds of Easington and Knowsley, only 29 percent of votes are expected to be cast for someone other than Labour's candidates, while in Ceredigion and Arfon, as many as two out of three votes will be cast for someone other than the winning candidate.

This is quite the presentation into the ills of first-past-the-post, both for stable and bellwether seats. A similar presentation could be (and perhaps should be) made later this fall with regards to control of Congress and the Electoral College. It would be interesting to know whether someone moving to Jackson County should settle in Lee's Summit (covered by the reliably Democratic 5th District), shuffle east to Blue Springs (which is the tailbone of an increasingly reliable Republican 6th District), or make the commute from Odessa in neighbouring Lafayette County (where, despite the long tenure of Ike Skelton, the 4th District just might swing to the GOP this fall.)

Online resources worth perusing

In addition to the BBC's continuous feed of election updates, every major UK media outlet are providing critical resources for their readers/viewers. I'll be highlighting two in particular.

The first is Sky News' constituency guide. Although that link leads to their generic election map, clicking on a constituency's news page leads you to an RSS-fed page for that constituency, featuring the Tweets of Parliamentary candidates and active followers, as well as recent news from reliable local news sources. For example, the page for Folkestone and Hythe features the Twitter feeds of Damian Collins from the Conservatives and Lynne Beaumont from the Liberal Democrats, as well as headlines from the online-based Hawkinge Gazette.

The second is everyone's favourite party platform matchmaker, this one provided by the Daily Telegraph. A voter answers 30 questions about 12 subjects to determine which parties' manifestos are the best fit for them. Although this is standard in every election that's been run in the online age, the Telegraph's engine allows the voter to de-select parties he/she would never consider voting for, or are not running candidates in his/her constituency. And, with separate engines for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, you can see how your political persuasions would fit in different parts of the UK.

Chickens happy to put Colonel Sanders in 10 Downing

For anyone that trust what the Daily Mail publishes with more than a grain of salt, this item is quite interesting:

Members of the Unite workers union, which includes many British Airways flight crews that went on strike over the last month, have indicated in a poll that they would prefer to see Conservative leader David Cameron become Prime Minister. The poll, which the Daily Mail says was commissioned by the Conservatives but administered independently, finds that 34 percent of the 500+ Unite members surveyed want Cameron as prime minister, five percent more than Gordon Brown. (Only 14 percent favoured Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg.)

Of course, in Daily Mail fashion, that statistic is buried deep in the story. Instead, they trump up the figure where 81 percent say it's "time for a change", implying that an overwhelming majority of this "far-left" union support the centre-right Tories. However, the remaining figures do not fare well for Labour, as three out of four Unite members would prefer that the union not spend their dues on supporting political candidates but instead themselves, and three out of five are dissatisfied with Brown's performance.

Labour and the major workers unions have strayed apart following the largely unsuccessful and violent miners strike of 1984. Arthur Scargill, who led the National Union of Mineworkers during the strike, broke from the Labour Party in 1996 when Tony Blair effectively renounced socialism in Labour's campaign manifestos. The largest union in the UK, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, spearheaded a separate electoral alliance of socialist and union-oriented parties in 2009 to contest races for the European Parliament. No2EU, Yes to Democracy, now the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, expresses a more left-oriented brand of Euroscepticism, counter to the pro-business platform of UKIP.

Of course, as this was a poll commissioned by the Conservatives, there probably was no mention of the TUSC in the survey, or the results would have probably gone against their favour. But for the time being, this is another jab at the Labour establishment, painting them as starkly similar to a dystopian Animal Farm, and providing relevance to the ironic statement "Chickens for Colonel Sanders".

And of course, this report (which I've not found published in any other UK paper yet) comes from the same paper which (by way of a different editorial staff, obviously) endorsed Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the 1935 election.

IT'S ON!!

Begin enduring four weeks of campaign slogans, nationalist parties with no chance for even the guest room at 10 Downing clamouring for publicity, and yours truly finding ways to compare Gordon Brown to Harry Truman even though he's been critical of this post-Blair government. The 2010 general election campaign in the UK is underway.

The BBC has a wonderful summary page that provides live updates and, if you are in the UK (or can convince the Beeb that your IP is in the UK), live video of various campaign events.

Already most media are talking about the prospect of a hung parliament, a rather derisive way of saying minority or coalition government, which is more prevalent in other Westminster-style legislatures like Canada (such as the current minority government of Stephen Harper) and Israel (which consistently generates coalition governments). A snap poll conducted on Facebook today by Channel 4 News, as a show of the significance social media networking sites will have on this election, also indicates the prospect of a hung parliament.

Should a hung parliament come about, it would essentially be a victory in the eye (er, eyes) of the Prime Minister. Even if the Conservatives are able to gain the most votes and seats, Brown as the current occupant would be able to stick around until a clear majority came about to defeat his government. From this position he could also establish a stable governing coalition or cadre of small parties (namely Plaid Cymru & SNP, partially ironic considering both are Labour's strongest challengers in Wales & Scotland!) willing to back him on confidence issues. And if the Conservatives, as polls now suggest, have fallen into hung parliament territory following their commanding lead throughout most of 2009's surveys, it will represent a collapse comparable to that of (bottoms up for anyone crazy enough to start a drinking game around this) Dewey in '48 and about half the elections in Canada the past decade.

Only twice since the watershed election of 1945 has Britain had a minority government, both during the 1970s. The first was formed in February 1974 by Labour's Harold Wilson when they claimed a four-seat advantage over the Tories; however, Wilson was unable to gain the support of enough parties to form a coalition (the third-place Liberals only had 18 seats) and had to call another election in October. While Labour won an outright majority in that election, enough by-election defeats and Wilson's sudden decision in 1976 to retire as Prime Minister & return to the backbenches resulted in another minority government led by Harold Macmillan. That minority government was toppled by Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives in 1979.

Should a hung parliament come about, expect any or all of the following:

1. Sterling's value at $1.30 by the Fourth of July, USD if the almighty quid's lucky.
2. A new election right after Christmas (when John Denver takes the Christmas #1!)
3. George Osborne or Alistair Darling getting the boot to make room for Vince Cable as Chancellor of the Exchequer, as part of a deal to gain the Liberal Democrats' participation in a coalition government.
4. Nationalist parties to play a role in a coalition. For Labour, they'll try and garner the support of Plaid Cymru and the SNP, on top of their ties with the SDLP of Northern Ireland, and possibly a Green or two that could get elected from Brighton. The Conservatives, which have next-to-no influence in Scotland but a growing base in Wales, will seek the support of both Unionist parties in the Ulster counties.
5. Even more pages from the Obama playbook (and maybe even Sarah Palin's) making their way across the pond. Again, this is the first election since the advent of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and all sorts of other social networking pages, on top of mobile phones & devices that can allow people to watch campaign speeches from the comfort of a National Express bus stuck in traffic on the M25. Also, it's the first election since Tony Blair left office with military operations in Iraq still ongoing, MPs were building duck moats and teenage lover's coffee houses with taxpayer funds, resentment among voters will be high.
   
   A hung parliament will resolve few if any of these issues, leading to possibly more resentment and demonstrations, along with all parties using these media to keep getting their various message across.

Of course, we have four weeks to see this play out. All aboard!

Whistle Stop Train leaves St. Pancras at 0900

British media across the spectrum are reporting that Prime Minister Gordon Brown, following a Cabinet meeting and regrouping from the Easter holiday, will head to Buckingham Palace and formally request that Her Majesty (finally) dissolve this current term of Parliament.

Provided he doesn't hiccup and wait for another month, the frustration of British voters accumulating over the past five years—the economy, Iraq and Afghanistan, MPs expenses, government spending in general, the Lisbon Treaty, immigration, devolution—will finally clash in what is the most anticipated election since the polls of October 1992. And with the most MPs standing aside since the war-delayed election of 1945 (where a big-tent Labour majority upended Churchill's postwar ambitions), the stakes couldn't be higher, and the outcome too close to call.

Over the course of the next month we will see all this play out, full-blown as opposed to just in news bits. Complete with duck moats, non-doms, kingmakers, baby bumps, bigots in denial, and the first televised debates between the men who could be Prime Minister.

Game on, Britannia.

Oh, and everyone in Missouri: several municipalities and school districts have candidates and ballot issues for your perusal tomorrow. Please don't be part of the 80% who don't bother to go to the polls tomorrow.