On May 7, 2015, the good people of the United Kingdom goes to the polls to elect their next set of representatives and ofcourse the next Prime Minister. BlackBox Nigeria takes a look at the country's journey to elections five years after a coalition which brought in the incumbent Prime Minister.

Unlike Nigeria which uses a Presidential system of government, the UK operates a parliamentary system of government which means that the party with the highest number of representatives produces the Prime Minister.

The 2015 election is apparently a close race between incumbent Prime Minister; David  Cameron's Conservative party against the left-wing Labour Party which is headed by Ed Milliband. It is indeed another play of the 2010 elections which saw the Tories(another name for the Conservatives) go into an alliance with the Liberal Democrats, a third populist party in a coalition which was described as "a very British revolution" by Dr. Abdul-Rahman Olayiwola, a former Head of Department at the Lagos State University Political Science department. Olayiwola, a former Liberal Democrat Councillor of Chaucer Ward in the UK had posited that the coalition was a move to paralyse the Labour Party.

The UK Parliament has a total of 650 seats while a party needs atleast 326 seats to head the government. In 2010 the Conservatives won 307 seats against the Labour's 258 seats. The Tories went into Coalition with the Liberal Democrats who had 57 seats to get the necessary requirement to form government. 

However, BlackBox Nigeria findings reveal that the 2015 elections appears to be a head to head battle between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party as Prime Minister David Cameron seeks to continue his leadership of the parliament as well as his continued stay as the head of the British government. He would be returning to his Witney constituency which he has represented since 2001.

On his part, opposition leader; Ed Milliband would be hoping to get the majority his party lost in 2010 which saw the departure of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown from the parliament. Milliband who has been representing Doncaster North constituency since 2005 seeks to be Prime Minister and only time would tell if this would come to past as the time ticks slowly to May 7 which is less than 70 hours away.

BBN Special Report!‎

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