Indecision Internationale 2010: The Morning After the Weekend Before

Update: Brown is resigning and the British economy sinks into the Atlantic.

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The British people has spoken! And they have said "Ummm…"

With no overall winner in the British General Election, negotiations as to which political parties will form the next British government have continued through the weekend. Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats has continued to be a pricktease to both Still-Hanging-on-as-Prime-Minister Gordon Brown of the Labour Party and Leader-of-the-Opposition-But-We-Got-More-Votes-than-Brown David Cameron of the Conservative Party.

Those are the official titles, by the way, Oh yes.

So as we are a government-less country, chimney sweeps have taken to the streets in a battle with boisterous soccer fans, rising around on red double decker buses, and brandishing their unset, un-whitened teeth, while Lily Allen, Sir Michael Cain, Paul McCartney, David Beckham and any other Brits you may have vaguely heard of try to keep order. Or something like that. Look, I can fight against stereotypes, but sometimes you’ve just got to go with them.

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Tags: Conservative Party (UK), David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Indecision Internationale, Labour Party (UK), Liberal Democrat Party (UK), Nick Clegg, United Kingdom

Andrew Sullivan Teaches Stephen Colbert the True Meaning of a Very, Very Hung Parliament

The Daily Dish's Andrew Sullivan was on The Colbert Report last night to discuss the clustershag Britons are currently experiencing, and the responses are apparently pouring in…

Was that a beard, or did a beaver die on your face?

Does it have to be one or the other? Isn't compromise supposed to be the upside of a parliamentary system?

The Colbert Report airs Monday through Thursday at 11:30pm / 10:30c.

Tags: Andrew Sullivan, Conservative Party (UK), David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Indecision Internationale, Labour Party (UK), Liberal Democrat Party (UK), Nick Clegg, Porn, Queen Elizabeth, Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report, United Kingdom

Indecision Internationale 2010: What If You Had an Election and Nothing Happened?

So we had an election yesterday. The mother of all Parliaments asked its people to grace it with our votes. And we complied, in record numbers, some crowding stations so much so that they were left unable to vote. The count went on well into the early hours and we awoke this morning keen to discover at which lucky individual fate had pointed its fickle finger, intoning, "You! Ugly White Man! Rule the Country."

But its finger hadn't pointed at anyone, just played its part in a dismissive wave. We have a hung parliament. And not in a "Why, Mr Parliament, aren't you impressively hung!" kind of way. Instead, Britain is feeling rather flaccid. No one is in control. And no one is sure who will be. Our demonstration to the world of open, reliable, trustworthy democracy has resulted in shady backroom deals between politicians and their familiars — literally anything could happen. They could emerge saying that we will now be a revolutionary monarchy with the clone of Winston Churchill catapulted (literally) onto the throne wearing a chicken hat. We just don't know.

Gordon Brown, as incumbent Prime Minister, is meant to get first crack at forming a government by reaching out to other parties. But any deal with the Liberal Democrats would likely involve a introducing a fairer system of electoral representation, giving their party a better shake of the stick — and ensuring that this kind of thing happens every election. And even with them onside he wouldn't quite have enough seats to form a government.

David Cameron — leader of the now-largest party, the Conservatives — is making as many deals with parties as he can but looks determined to govern as a minority government, unable to pass much legislation or do much else besides trying to cut costs, hoping to keep his party together and praying that not too many of them die in office.

While Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats got many less seats and votes than expected, he seems likely casting the deciding vote on every piece of legislation that comes through the door. Yes, the future of the country is in the hands of the man that the least people voted for.

Can't we have a good old fashioned dictatorship again? It was so much easier to work out what was going on….

Of course, my Member of Parliament is now no longer an anti-airport Liberal Democrat but a millionaire, overseas domicled, Jewish pig farming Conservative who doesn't like science. So that should be fun.

You know, It's weird. We currently have no government. And yet nothing has collapsed. The libertarians were right!!!

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Rich Johnston lives in London, works in advertising, writes about comics and draws cartoons for the UK's leading political blog, Guido Fawkes. He'll vote for the first party that promises to legalise the smoking of squirrels for medicinal purposes.

Tags: Conservative Party (UK), David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Indecision Internationale, Labour Party (UK), Liberal Democrat Party (UK), Nick Clegg, United Kingdom

Indecision Internationale 2010: The Top Five Ways to Lose a General Election in the U.K.

There's nothing quite like making a gaffe in an election campaign. The off-the-cuff, not thoroughly-thought-through comment that gets picked up by the press and then swirls around the media impervious to all efforts to be put back in the box. But how can you make the best gaffes to guarantee the best headlines? Here are a few examples to follow…

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5. Declare War Before You're Even Prime Minister

David Cameron — leader of the Opposition — expressed in leadership debates a desire to retain an independent nuclear arsenal because, "We don't know what is going to happen with Iran, we can't be certain of the future in China?" Because yes, that's what you want to do in an election campaign, suggest that you may want to go to war with a big emerging superpower that happens to have a hundred more warheads than you? The story of David and Goliath usually goes the other way in real life.

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Tags: Conservative Party (UK), David Cameron, Facebook, Gordon Brown, Indecision Internationale, Internet, Labour Party (UK), LGBT, Liberal Democrat Party (UK), Nick Clegg, Racism, Twitter, United Kingdom

Indecision Internationale 2010: Taking a Dump on Nick Clegg

Last week I mentioned that as a result of Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg's storming performance on the live televised Leader's Debate (if only as a result of him not being leader of the Conservatives or the Labour Party) that the knives would be out for him.

And with the second leadership debate on air tonight in the UK, that prediction had proved correct.

Most of the main newspapers in Britain are conservative ones — and conservative in the way that make Fox News look like Air America. And, today, all the front pages of all these newspapers, selling millions of copies across the country, have been going to war with Nick Clegg. Waking up to them, his wife might as well have tipped his breakfast in bed over his head (including the scalding coffee) as hand him the papers.

Old warhorse, The Daily Mail led with a front page splash "Clegg Nazi Slur on Britain" and referred to an eight-year-old newspaper article it had unearthed in which Clegg talked of Britain, saying: "A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off. We need to be put back in our place." That, however, wasn't good enough for The Mail. It unloaded two further barrels into the Clegg camapign, first alleging that Clegg had accepted payments from donors for his own personal bank account to pay towards a researcher, and then that Hilary Stephenson — Mr Clegg's campaigns and elections director — was responsible for encouraging expenses scams.

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Tags: Conservative Party (UK), Gordon Brown, Indecision Internationale, Labour Party (UK), LGBT, Liberal Democrat Party (UK), Nick Clegg, United Kingdom