Voters in the United Kingdom defied the polls and stuck with embattled Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party because at crunch time they saw the folly of putting socialists in power, former British lawmaker John Browne told
Newsmax TV on Friday.
Many liberals even recoiled at the thought of Labour Party leader Ed Miliband's making good on promises to raise taxes and cut defense spending, Browne told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner, saying, "They were absolutely terrified of the prospect of a socialist victory, and they fled into the Conservative Party."
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Cameron on Thursday
held onto the reins of power in what election-watchers called a stunner, with Conservatives winning an outright majority that lets Cameron stay on as party leader and form a new government.
The leftists of Labour and the center-lift Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, were routed.
Cameron faces an uncertain future, however, with the U.K. mulling an exit from the European Union and Scottish voters serving notice on Thursday that secession from the U.K. is still on the table, said former Conservative MP Browne and another "MidPoint" guest, London writer and broadcaster Isabel Hilton.
"If you look at the map of the [entire] United Kingdom, you color it in according to the way people voted, there is no national political party any longer," said Hilton.
She said that the pro-independence Scottish National Party scored a "remarkable victory," going from six seats in Parliament to 56 and leaving Labour with only three in Scotland, but that the SNP is moving in a "completely different political direction" than the also-Balkanized Labour and Conservative camps.
"There is nobody that actually can possibly say, 'We represent Britain,'" said Hilton.
Browne predicted that ultimately Britain will remain an EU member "because Cameron is pro-euro" and will put his thumb on the scales of the EU referendum he has promised to voters. But it could be a smaller and weaker Britain, with Germany wielding the real EU power, he said.
Despite Scots' rejecting independence in a 2014 referendum, Browne said the Scottish question is going to be raised again — and this time on both sides.
"The British and English members of Parliament are going to say, 'Why should you, who want an independent Scotland, be voting on [affairs of] England?' " he said.
If the two do split, Britain becomes "less important," said Browne, "and therefore less a powerful and influential ally."
He also wondered how long Cameron can hold together a governing coalition that might require some support from the right, meaning the anti-EU, anti-immigration UK Independence Party (UKIP), he said.
"Things are going to be difficult," said Browne. "Cameron is really a pinko conservative. He's not really a conservative. Therefore, he'll start to lose his people . . . and they'll start going back to the liberals, going back to UKIP and things like that."
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