Major UK elections of the past 3 years and student involvement

Let us start chronologically with the Scottish referendum. Scots voted on having a referendum in the Scottish parliament in November 2013 and the UK government agreed to hold the referendum in 2014. Scottish First Minister – Alex Salmond – was the main initiator and the face of the Yes campaign. The No campaign did not have a clear leader, but it could be argued that it was David Cameron himself – although all Westminster parties were in favour of Scotland remaining in the UK. The Queen remained tacit and did not endorse either, only asked the people of Scotland to vote and to make the right decision. Very interesting was the situation in England – only people living in Scotland got to vote, yet it was heavily discussed all over the country. Most of the people wished for Scotland to stay, yet many pointed out that Scotland receives more funds from Westminster than it contributes and that British economy would be healthier if Scotland left. There were not any campaigns running on the campuses in England, but it was popular topic of discussion. The Scottish Independence referendum turned out to have the highest participation rate in the history of the UK – over 80% of Scots voted, with the No campaign winning with 55% of votes. For conservative Britons it was a relief – nothing needs to change.

2015 General Election shortly followed and the referendum still had a significant impact, mainly on Scottish constituencies. Tory-LibDem coalition was predicted to end and Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour party was seen as the straightforward favourite. Unlike Scottish referendum, this election had a significant presence at the campus. Labour Club and Conservative Association were seen around campaigning, distributing leaflets and hosting debates among the candidates running for Durham constituency. Politics is part of my degree and I am interest in current affairs in general, but before the election it seemed to be much more widespread than was usual. As in most cases, Labour was much more visible – expecting a clear victory and generally having more appealing revolutionary image, compared to Conservatives. There was not really any sight of LibDems, UKIP or any other parties. Those two main campaigns were not really confronted on the campus, but the tension was present in the expectation of change. On the night voting stations closed surprising news took the UK by storm – exit polls were predicting narrow victory of the Conservatives. Social networks were flooded by angry Labour supporters, who did not want to believe what they were seeing. The exit polls turned out to be only slightly inaccurate – Tories won comfortable majority. SNP in took Scotland completely and LibDems were essentially wiped out. The concept of shy Tories was used as an explanation of the striking difference between predictions and results – Conservative supporters were more likely to be shy, why Labour one were very vocal.

Now another major political event is coming up – EU referendum. This topic divides British society greatly. Conservatives are not united, despite their close leadership campaigning for Stay Campaign. Many conservative backbenchers and even some cabinet figures are now openly backing leave and call Cameron’s deal with the EU insufficient. We have an active campaign on the campus backing Leave, but it seems that students overall are more likely to vote to stay, in the same way as all other major parties (aside from UKIP) support the Stay campaign. My personal (and therefore probably not very relevant) expectation is that UK is going to stay in, for the same reasons Scotland did stay in the UK – there is a great deal of uncertainty and things might go a lot worse if UK leaves, voting for staying if is after all a very safe choice. I myself would like UK to stay, as it makes EU stronger and this whole referendum might start the desperately needed reformation of the EU, and I am currently pondering on whether should I vote or not (all EU citizens based in the UK are allowed to vote) – having a say on Britain’s future while being a foreigner seems a bit weird to me.