Tomorrow's wounded zealot, yesterday's nasty

United Kingdom voters were quite eloquent in what they expressed. Being so fervently convinced about an objective as to go about it at all costs, is objectionable. Being nasty, personal and populist helps you appeal to basic instincts but not enough not to leave you abhorrent and unconvincing to those with a good dose of common decency within them.

Abstentions in Thursday's general election were expected to be high. And so it came to pass, though the total of 61 per cent who voted went up slightly over 2001. Not every country is as passionate about politics as we are, whether that is measured in terms of the turnout at general elections, invariably bumping on the +95 per cent base line, or in terms of breathing, talking and voiding politics, usually of the partisan type.

Britain's young seemed to be particularly uninterested. There is an articulate young movement among them that wants the age of the right to vote to be lowered to 16. Yet a large chunk of those who held that right on Thursday, being 18 or over, felt no burning urge to exercise it.

They could not be bothered whether Labour won a historic successive third term. Whether the Conservatives went one better than Lazarus and rose from the dead without divine assistance. Or whether the most sincere looking of the political tripod, the Liberals, were or were not given a stronger base to be the scourge of and threat to the other two.

And so it came to pass that the Labour government's economic record over the eight years, since it made it as squeaky New Labour, won the day once more. The party garnered another majority, if with a deeply cut margin in the Commons above the 324 seats required for an absolute majority. That, as usual, did not at all reflect a majority of the voting electorate, only two in five, in fact. Thereby it demonstrated again the "impure" form of electoral democracy practised in the United Kingdom, in comparison to our own "hard" electoral democracy.

The first-past-the post system does not guarantee any close correlation between the number of votes gained by a party and those of its candidates elected as MPs. It is more imperfect, in that regard, than the electoral college system practised in presidential elections in the USA. There, the system twice gave victory to a President who managed to attract only a minority of the popular vote, condemning to oblivion the rival who beat him in pure democratic terms.

Labour won, but not without a very high degree of discomfort. Many voters, including real Labour ones, rather than those who have been voting for the party because it is no longer a Labour Party, were disenchanted with Tony Blair over the war on Iraq. They detested Saddam Hussein, and all the evil he stood for. But they dislike their Prime Minister turning into a sorry impression of America's war-spouting President.

Not enough people were poisoned by the ultra-conservative's Michael Howard viciousness - thinly masked against immigrants and expressed, mouth foaming, against Mr Blair personally. Mr Howard made himself a one-man battering ram for the floundering Conservative Party. He had hoped that his nastiness would touch enough chords among voters to catapult him into unexpected office.

The insincerity in his new-found holy stance over the war on Iraq, which he had supported, was not lost on voters who did not allow his rabble rousing get to them. Most of those who defected from Labour preferred the Liberals to the Conservatives. The rise in the Liberal vote to Labour's cost enabled the Tories to make headway in terms of seats. Nevertheless, Mr Howard joined the ranks of another has been.

The Liberal's Charles Kennedy came through as a man who is tough and brooks no nonsense but who will not trade his political soul for purely opportunistic advantage.

A deeply wounded Mr Blair has secured the exalted place in history he desired. Gordon Brown will succeed him in around two years from now.

What will the next four to five years bring along that might affect Malta? The island shall continue to have an ally it has got to know well within the European Union.

Malta will watch closely to see whether the British economy will continue to do well. A substantial part of our foreign exchange earnings continues to come from Britain, including through manufacturing exports and tourism. Irrespective of the outcome of Thursday's election, a sound British economy remains in the interest of Malta's economy.