The UK elections

In the general election held in the United Kingdom, incumbent Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party came out first from the ballot box and managed to reach a majority enough to form the government on its own. This is a process that can also be interpreted as a continuation of the Conservative Party's previous election victory.

Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, who had repeatedly said before the election that Prime Minister David Cameron should resign if he failed to reach, from the ballot box, a majority enough for the Conservative Party to form the government on its own, announced that he had decided to resign once the election results were finalized. Together with the Labour leader, another leader who resigned within 52 minutes after the election results became clear was Liberal Democrat Party leader Nick Clegg. The period in which the leaders announced their resignation decisions is also interpreted in Britain as

"the 52 minutes that shook England."

This shocking scene that shook England, but which has in fact become routine for English democracy, is not one whose like we can often see in Turkey. As is known, the leader of the MHP, which has emerged in defeat from every election it has entered since 2002, and the leader of the CHP, which has emerged in defeat from every election it has entered since the day he became Chairman, never had any thought of resigning after a failure; they tended to evaluate the defeats they suffered as successes and to convince themselves of this. The main opposition party leader has been able to present having raised his vote by one or two points as a measure of success. In these days when we are heading rapidly toward the election, the CHP Chairman, who makes hard-to-believe promises on everything, even in this atmosphere, the only thing he cannot engage in populism about and cannot promise is winning the elections, being the first party in the elections. He promises everything but cannot promise anyone that he will win the elections. His whole dream is to get 35 percent of the vote, and he cannot even accept in advance that this vote will not bring him to power, or even make him the first party against the AK Parti. So, who should believe, and why, the promises made lavishly by an opposition leader who accepts from the outset that he cannot win the election? Of course that is a separate matter.

The election results in Britain undoubtedly have other dimensions or extensions. Especially from the standpoint of Turkey and the AK Parti, the Conservative Party is the other most important founding member of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR) in the European Parliament, of which Turkey is also a founding member. For the relations between the AK Parti, which looks set to be the first party again in its own election, and Britain, one more stable channel has already been considerably strengthened.

The election results also have important dimensions in terms of domestic politics. In the referendum held in Scotland in September 2014, 55 percent of the Scottish people decided to continue the union of more than 300 years under the United Kingdom. In this process the Labour Party, which is quite strong in Scotland, had also campaigned for the union to continue.

The election results show that the outcome of the Labour Party's campaign in Scotland was negative, for while Labour won 40 seats in Scotland last term, it appears to have won only 1 seat this term. On the other hand, the Scottish National Party (SNP), which campaigned for separation in the referendum, has raised its number of seats from 6 last term to 56. Labour officials think this result is a direct consequence of the referendum campaign, but they try to comfort themselves by saying that if the vote had come out yes for separation they would have lost the country, whereas now they have lost only an election.

It can be said that in a sense the Labour Party also ensured that Scotland clung to the center. It is remarkable that, according to the election results at hand, the Labour Party's profile in Scottish politics has almost reached the vanishing point.

These results may be thought to be diametrically opposed to the referendum results, but the SNP does not interpret the election results this way. The SNP leader said that the Scottish people's favor toward the SNP was a demand for more social spending and a stance against austerity policies. In this respect it can be said that the SNP leader has achieved a quite constructive level of political rhetoric.

On the other hand, the announcement by the winner Cameron that the reforms on devolution of powers and decentralization to Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, which he emphasized frequently in his election campaign, will be put into practice urgently can be considered another of the domestic consequences of the election.

The result of the elections also concerns the EU in particular. As early as 2013, Cameron had said that if he won the election to be held in 2015, he would take Britain's EU membership to a referendum in 2017. Cameron emphasized this promise throughout the election campaign as well. Cameron essentially envisages a new negotiation process with the European Union and wants to take back some of the powers transferred to Brussels and to impose some limits on immigration from EU member states. Throughout the election campaign Cameron had promised that if the EU approached his demands favorably, he would campaign for continued EU membership. However, the EU bureaucracy, Germany first of all, is quite distant toward Cameron's demands.

For Turkey, which is conducting membership negotiations with the EU, this dimension of the election results may perhaps be horizon-opening. The EU is no longer Turkey's single, unswerving, indispensable goal. It is also the right of Turkey and the people of Turkey to be sensitive about the need for an equal relationship.