Unlike in India, where the Election Commission takes days and sometimes weeks to announce the results of polls, even though using electronic voting machines, election outcomes in the UK are clear within hours of polling. In the US as well, except for anomalies, elections such as where George W Bush was selected as President of the United States by the Supreme Court, results are out equally quickly. In India, keeping alive the colonial tradition of secrecy, neither the Election Commission nor the government of the day lets on why the declaration of results takes so long when votes have been instantaneously recorded and tallied by the voting machines. Red wax seals that even a child can remove appear to be all that stands between fraud and a genuine result, while ballot boxes get taken away to undisclosed destinations. Given the glacial speed of processes in India, what we may term “Colonial Democracy” is a legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru that has been preserved with zest by each of his successors. The latest, Narendra Modi, will soon, hopefully, make into reality his vow of “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance”.
Coming back to the United Kingdom, it is clear that enough voters in England voted Conservative out of the fear of both the Scottish Nationalists as well as a dysfunctional coalition. Edward Miliband paid the price for (in a sense) backstabbing his own elder brother to grab the leadership of the Labour Party.
If David Miliband had remained the leader of his party, the gap between Labour and Conservatives may have been closer than the 99-seat margin of this poll. Those who know Ed Miliband say that he will do more than eat a ham sandwich (done to show that he does not observe the dietary restrictions of his Jewish faith) to get to power, and that this includes cosying up to elements in the UK electorate who are — stripped of the verbiage used as camouflage — votaries of jihad.
Although he declared his love for this country in an interview to a television channel, his chumminess with those who follow the ISI agenda on Khalistan and Kashmir is not a secret, and hence there will be relief that he will not be the Prime Minister of a country that is still a significant international player because of its language, its history and its centrality in the global financial system.
David Cameron showed an appalling lack of judgement in following Nicolas Sarkozy in the manner of a poodle over the question of regime change in Libya, and he has been similarly short-sighted in going along with Qatar and Turkey in giving cash and weapons to Wahhabi extremists in Syria on the specious grounds that they are “moderate freedom fighters”.
However, where this country is concerned, Cameron has played a deft hand, reaching out to Narendra Modi within days of the 2014 election result, and in refusing to go along with those who continue to behave as though it is India and not Pakistan where the “minority” population has dropped from 35% to less than 3%, and that it is Pakistan and not India where the population of minorities has risen substantially every year since 1947. Except for those who make money out of scare stories about India, it will be clear to any visitor that this diverse country is very far from the fascist state that Sonia Gandhi’s father was a part of during the 1930s, and (which credible reports aver) he served in uniform during the next decade, until taken prisoner by the Red Army.
Britain has witnessed coalition politics. Indeed, during the 1939-45 war, Churchill wisely took into his government the main opposition parties, thereby forming a national government to face the threat emanating from Hitler.
During the past five years, the Conservatives have been allied to the Liberal Democrats, and a repeat of this experiment would not have alarmed the English part of the UK. What caused disquiet was the prospect of the Labour Party forming the government in alliance with the Scottish Nationalists and perhaps the Greens, a regime which would have rivalled the present Greek government in its left of centre approach to policy. Absent such a prospect, UKIP would certainly have got many more seats, as that party is closer than the Conservative Party is to understanding the uneasiness felt by many in Britain about the entry of millions from across the world. However, a vote for UKIP may have been the vote which brought about the election of a Labour candidate, and this most voters were unwilling to chance. Cameron has got the majority which eluded him in 2010 in large part because his party seemed about to do worse than the last time rather than better, and thereby bring Ed Miliband into office, so that he could consume as many ham sandwiches as his handlers told him to devour.
Hopefully, the Prime Minister will not forget the fact that this time around, a majority of those in the UK who are descended from the people of India voted for him rather than for Labour, and that they have done so because he has not thus far at least signed on to the Hate India brigade which paints this country as a den of extremists, unlike Miliband, who regularly breaks bread with this hate filled, hateful crowd.