Brits Are No Fools

So the British voters decided not to decide. They made the Conservative Party the biggest party in Parliament. Latest results are Conservatives: 305 seats, Labour: 258, Lib-Dems: 57. But the voters denied the Tories the 326 seats that would give them a majority.

It makes sense. The Tories are the center-right party. They don't really believe in the relentless expansion of the centralized welfare state.

But nearly everyone in Britain is sucking from the nanny state's teat. You can imagine that they are hesitant about weaning themselves off nanny's milk, even if the country is running a 10 percent of GDP deficit. Even if Greece is imploding just down the street.

In a way, it would be better for the Tories if the center left parties formed a coalition and governed against them. Then the center-left parties would be confronted with the need to do something about their cruel, corrupt, unjust, and wasteful welfare state. They might actually cut some spending!

Then they could take the blame for the cuts and let the Tories take over when the bloodletting was over.

But that is hoping for too much. The likely scenario is that the Conservative Party under David Cameron will form a government and implement some spending cuts and be forever after pilloried as the cruel Tories that cut the heart out of Britain.

Or maybe not. If David Cameron has a special skill, it would be to talk to the center and entice it into believing that he cares about Middle Britain almost as much as his posh Tory friends. If he can do that, then maybe he can form a new center-right coalition to push back against the center-left consensus that has ruled Britain since 1965 with only a brief Thatcher interregnum in the 1980s.

There is always hope.