See Also: US media reaction to UK election result
In the American media, commentators discuss the results of the UK's general election.
finds another reason to call the election result unprecedented:
The UK election turned out to be perhaps the only election I can think of where all three parties managed to lose at the same time. Each in a different way.
On that Gordon Brown's biggest enemy now is the "Tory press", especially Murdoch papers calling for his head:
The Tories are already bleating on about their "moral victory" and Labour's repudiation, but in fact the country hasn't elected the Tories and Gordon Brown can sit tight and will. He is tough, a Scottish bruiser when it comes to a knuckle fight. His biggest enemy now is the Tory tabloid press. Murdoch scion James has already been heard chewing the carpet at Times newspapers and girding for a battle that will end with Cameron in Number Ten. The nation is feeling even more bad tempered, broke and anxious than it did the weeks before. With images of incipient revolution in Greece flooding the TV screens on election eve, the City is baying for a "decisive," aka Tory, government.
puts the election results down to Britain's disaffection with the traditional political parties:
As results rolled in across the country, it became clear that the first national election since revelations last year of widespread misuse of parliamentary expense accounts had provided voters with a chance to put the boot into the big parties.
On that the measures necessary to right the UK budget may punish the party whose leader ends up in Number 10 for generations.
After a hard-fought campaign spent scurrying across the country in a last-minute effort to win undecided voters, David Cameron has probably won enough votes to become Britain's prime minister, assuming he can form a coalition with one of the other two parties. But why, again, does he want the job? The plain truth is that when Cameron moves into Downing Street, he'll inherit a financial mess that's almost unprecedented in peacetime Britain, and it carries nasty political implications. This is an election that, looking back, any sane leader might have preferred to lose.
that no matter who becomes the next prime minister, expect a cooling of the "special relationship" between the US and the UK:
Britain's next prime minister, whoever he is, is well aware the Labor Party's decline after 13 years of rule is tied to the belief London has been too much in lockstep with a succession of American Presidents.Labor has never recovered from the perception that former Prime Minister Tony Blair was so tight with Washington he was ridiculed as President George W Bush's "poodle".
The next PM won't repeat the mistake of cozying up with Barack Obama.
