Indian-origin voters crucial in the UK election
Most experts believe that Thursday’s general election in the United Kingdom will result in a hung House since there appears to be no clear winner — at least not so far evidently visible. The last time the parliamentary poll was held in 2010, the Conservatives had bagged 307 out of a total of 650 seats. They had to form a Government with the help of liberal Democrats who had secured 57 seats, pushing their traditional rival, the labour Party, which had won 258 seats, to the opposition ranks. Experts also believe that the Indian-origin migrant votes will play a crucial role in deciding the fate of the three principal parties and even perhaps manage to avoid a hung Parliament situation.
But for this to happen, the Indian-origin voters — more than 600,000 in number — have to vote almost en bloc one way or the other. The situation becomes more tantalising given that neither the Conservative nor the labour parties can claim hegemony over the Indian-origin votes. It is true that the Indian diaspora voters have over the years shifted their loyalty from labour to Conservative — a new British Election Study has shown that the number of voters who back labour had fallen from 77 per cent 1997 to 18 per cent in 2014. With the main beneficiary being the Tories, incumbent Prime Minister David Cameron must be hoping to ride home on this critical shift. There are several reasons for the sharp fall in India-origin voter support that labour has suffered, but among the key ones will be the changed socio-economic profile and the aspiration of the ‘new and young voters’.
This generation of voters does not have the emotional or historical attachment its predecessor had with labour and its supposedly ‘pro-poor’ policies. After the free-market economy, especially the kind Margaret Thatcher successfully crafted in the face of stiff opposition, old mindsets have given way to new. The new voter has seen the benefits of an open economy and abhors the stifling policies which labour has been burdened with historically. Yet, the labour of today is not exactly the labour of the earlier decades; it too has changed to keep pace and is led by a young and rather dashing politician in Edward Miliband, who has assiduously wooed the Indian-origin community. Thus, like Mr Cameron or the liberal Democrats’ Nicholas William Peter ‘Nick’ Clegg, Mr Miliband too is banking on his ‘connect’ with the aspirational voter.
If the Indian-origin voters hedge their bets, then the liberal Democrats will once more be in a position to play a crucial role in Government-formation. The Clegg-led party can go either way, based on which one, between Conservative and labour, has a better chance to form the Government. Not having a heavy ideological baggage will help Mr Clegg decide on his party’s alliance. It needs no over-emphasis that he will ideally want to stay on the right side of the fence to consolidate his position and nurture his party’s political relevance.