Letter from London: U.K. Elections Reveal a Distinct Political Culture

ANUSHA AGARWAL: When I came to London for a year study abroad in September, I had assumed I’d be witnessing Brexit happen just a month later. Instead, I have witnessed firsthand an early general election that has a strong impact on the future of Brexit and the EU itself. Being an American in the United Kingdom during this time, I’ve often thought about how this election atmosphere compares to that of the United States, and I’ve noticed that it’s not as different as one might have thought. 

 Though the United Kingdom has a parliamentary system, meaning that many more political parties are involved in the political process, the election seems effectively to have been between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson for prime minister, and between the Conservative Party and Labour Party for control of Parliament. This dynamic seems very similar to the race between Donald Trump and a Democrat nominee in 2020, and the Republicans and Democrats fighting for control of Congress. It is interesting that all major UK parties have a predetermined leader for their party, as compared to the United States, in which hold primaries to decide the leader of the party not belonging to the president. 

 Brexit seems to have pushed forward many single-issue voters in this general election. Supporters of Brexit are most likely to back the Conservative Party, while opponents of the policy seem split: Labour, the main opposition to the Conservatives, has not committed to opposing Brexit, and the main anti-Brexit Party, the Liberal Democrats, were never likely to win a majority. Many people are calling for a second referendum, with the hopes of voting the other way on Brexit, while Brexit supporters argue that one vote was enough. 

 Though the U.K.’s two main parties may resemble Democrats and Republicans, both these parties are in many respects to the political left of their American counterparts. There seems to be more consensus between the two major parties in the U.K. than in the U.S. The major UK parties all release manifestos close to the election date to clearly lay out what policies they will work towards in parliament, while in the United States the more important platform is that of individual candidates rather than parties. Perhaps this explains the relatively broad policy distance between the two American parties. 

 Finally, in learning more about British politics, I’ve come to the conclusion that it plays a different role in people’s lives in the United Kingdom than in the United States. From what I’ve noticed, Americans feel much more strongly about their candidate than U.K. voters do. However, U.K. election turnout has historically been much higher, and despite pushes for voter registration in the U.S., voter registration is higher here as well. While neither system is perfect, each allows citizens to determine the direction of their country—and that’s exactly what voters here did on December 12, determining the direction of U.K. politics for the foreseeable future. 

Anusha Agarwal is a junior studying abroad at the London School of Economics.