After quite the lengthy fuss our friends in the United Kingdom have a two-party power-sharing coalition arrangement, a new government, and — as of yesterday — parliament back to work with the selection of a speaker.
So, what did we learn?
Not much, apparently.
Our American friends seemed pleased to have a source of political news that didn’t involve rambunctious Republicans or their fickle filibuster. But their coverage was based more on contrast than curiosity.
Keith Olbermann seemed genuinely excited to talk all things parliamentary democracy with his BBC guests but was also keenly aware of his audience’s implied attention span and therefore reluctant to pursue truly complex questions. While Jon Stewart’s half-sincere insistence on the American federal system being superior — U-S-A ! U-S-A ! U-S-A ! — felt more like a question than an assertion.
In America, coverage of foreign events can only be justified by bringing the narrative to rest on some matter of importance for America itself. Of course, that’s less a reflection of their national character than simply one of the luxuries of imperial affluence and therefore perhaps best referred to it as the imperial attention span — where the business of the empire is the only news fit to print.
It’s not exactly something you see in Canada but that doesn’t mean coverage here was any better. And while the American perspective is typical of their own mutual harried relationship with the UK, Canada’s blasé coverage was atypical of a country that has forgotten more about British politics throughout its history than much of the world.
The Globe and Mail‘s Campbell Clark reminded us that:
In six years of minority Parliaments, you would think Canada has seen all the cliffhanger twists. But we haven’t seen this one: two parties actually forming a real coalition with each holding ministerial posts in cabinet.
Which is probably the run-away observation of Canada’s entire coverage and most useful point of departure for all future comparison. But his colleague, John Ibbitson, sets us back with this puzzling statement:
The attempt in 2008 to force a coalition government on the Canadian people was an adolescent effort by the opposition to wield its newfound power. As coalition negotiations in London this week demonstrated, voters expect the party with the most seats to be part of the government.
Which seems to imply that we’ve somehow popularly disabused our Parliament of its representative powers by mandating that all power-sharing possibilities be cleared with the electorate before the election?
That’s now how it works, John.
If there’s anything to learn from this most recent UK election it is that parliaments are only as functional as their members’ willingness to cooperate. And more directly, that even parties adjacent to the centre can bridge their common interests to form a government.
Anyway, here’s the angle that virtually no one in English-Canada picked up on and that is perhaps most relevant to Canada’s peoples-centred framework: David Cameron (fairly Scottish) beat out Gordon Brown (very Scottish) to form a government with Nick Clegg (not Scottish, but Scottish-sounding).
When Prime Minister Cameron arrives in Canada (a place both literally founded by a Scot and with a provincial namesake) for the G8 and G20 meetings next month, he’ll be met by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and members of his obstructionist government, not the multi-party coalition that might have formed a government in 2008 (as was their right) — a government that would have been far more representative of Canada’s own parallel “Scottish situation” in all of its de-federalised complexity.
