Crisis is to blame for British hung parliament

Despite the loss suffered by the Labour Party in the elections to the British House of Commons, Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants to form a coalition government. The close election results are due to the similarities of the parties' programmes, which in turn are a reaction to the crisis, writes the daily Le Monde: "It's neither a Shakespearian tragedy nor a political crisis. This is the type of situation that generally prevails the day after elections in most of Europe, where governmental majorities are the result of coalitions. ... Nevertheless the case of Britain is particularly interesting, and these elections may be unprecedented, prefiguring as they do the political debate in Europe at this stage of the economic and financial crisis. ... Because if the race was so close between Gordon Brown and Tory leader David Cameron, it's also because their programmes hardly differed at all. ... One single topic dominated the campaign: how to reduce the historic budget deficit ... inherited by the financial crisis of 2008-2009."

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