Lessons for Britain from the US Midterm elections

Nothing.

No seriously there's almost nothing here that's relevant for Britain from the US elections and that's for a two main reasons:

1. This was a mid-term election, not a presidential-year election and the electorate that turns up for each one is completely different. Mid-term voters, particularly 2014 and 2010 are older, whiter, richer and more conservative than in presidential election years. Yes the entire House of Representatives was up for re-election and that is extremely important and analogous to the House of Commons but American voters don't treat mid-term elections the way British voters treat General Elections. The proper parallel is with presidential elections and even then the lessons are slim because...





2. British and American politics are no longer aligned in the way they were from the 60s to the 90s.

From the election of Harold Wilson in 1964 is was possible to draw broad parallels between Britain and America. Liberal reforming government passing many society-changing pieces of legislation followed by a conservative government that seems middle of the road by today's standards. A brief return to centre-left government for a single term that is not looked upon fondly by either side before being routed by the right for an enduring period of conservative rule whose leaders are now idolised by today's conservatives.

Things start to get unstuck in 1992 when John Major won but George H.W. Bush lost but with Blair swept in in 1997 you could say the two were still largely in-sync but with a 5 year time delay. Things really fell apart in 2000 when George W. Bush beat Al Gore which meant that the two most politically important events of the 2000's, the Iraq war and the financial crisis and subsequent recession, occurred under the Republicans in the US and Labour in the UK.

In Britain today therefore it's the Conservatives who can claim to be "picking up the mess" from the previous administration while Labour attempt to capitalise on the difference between the statistical recovery and what people may actually feel is happening while in the US it's the Republicans. The difference is that the US is a much more rigid two-party system where a setback for one side automatically means a gain for the other while in Britain we've seen UKIP doing better than Labour in capturing disaffection with the incumbent government despite two of the three 'main' parties being members of it.

There are parallels between UKIP and the Tea Party that one could make but the overall context is very different.

British politics has an obsession with its American equivalent. Yes the West Wing was very good (well, excluding season 5) but it wasn't an accurate depiction of the dynamics of American politics let alone a guide for Britain.