As if public discontent with Britain's burgeoning national debt did not spell enough problems for Gordon Brown and his Labour Party, Brown was caught calling a voter "bigoted" after a short exchange earlier today. His comments were caught as Brown talked to an aide in his motorcade, not realizing that his mic attached to his lapel was still on. The woman did not even say anything that bigoted besides a short aside on Eastern European immigrants. Judge for yourself:
Brown apologized, but, well, look at what's dominating BBC News's election coverage:
The crazy thing is that, according to most polls, Labour will win a plurality of seats in the House of Commons, even though polls are placing Labour third in the popular vote. (British MPs, unlike in other parliamentary systems, are elected by district, like the U.S. Congress.) It is likely that neither Labour nor the Conservatives will win an outright majority of seats, leaving a hung Parliament.
One of the parties must then form a governing coalition with the third-party Liberal Democrats. Although the Lib Dems' ideology would fit better with Labour than the Tories, the Lib Dems' platform includes instituting a proportional voting system. Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has even said, "It is just preposterous the idea that if a party comes third in the number of votes, it still has somehow the right to carry on squatting in No 10." Either way, it should be an interesting election come May 6.
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