Gourock,Scotland, May 8, 2011. Flickr/easylicum. Some rights reserved.The United Kingdom's general election is held on 7 May 2015 against a background a near stalemate in the opinion-polls between the two main parties, Conservatives and Labour, which held for months before the formal campaign started and then through the campaign itself. Once more, the main policy emphasis has almost entirely been on just two issues: the state of the economy and the well-being of the National Health Service (NHS). The rise of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and, to a lesser extent, the UK Independence Party has provided a new element, opening debate about the possible breakdown of two-party dominance and the need for the political system to reflect this.
The economy and the NHS apart, a few other policy areas have surfaced briefly, including education, housing and immigration (the last of these surprisingly little to the fore). Global concerns such as energy security, Middle East conflicts and terrorism have been almost wholly absent, and this is also true of climate change. The Greens made repeated but mostly ignored attempts to raise it, while the Labour leader Ed Miliband's mention of the issue in his speech on foreign policy was scarcely reported.
A further interesting feature of the campaign, especially in the context of the longer term, was the almost complete neglect of UK defence policy. The Tories did attempt to link Labour to nuclear disarmament by citing the anti-Trident views of its possible post-election associate, the SNP, but this made little headway as Miliband declared himself an enthusiast for the nuclear programme. More broadly, the wider issue of Britain's defence posture and its costs was nowhere to be seen.
