Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 08/2010

No real winner? Britain's closest election in a generation and the implications for Europe

Toby Archer

May 2010

Finnish Institute for International Affairs

Abstract

The British general election of 2010 has, despite all expectations, become a genuinely exciting and possibly ground-breaking event. If, as more and more opinion polls indicate, the outcome on May 7 is a hung parliament, with no one party having an overall majority, the result will reverberate through the British political system and onwards through European politics more generally.