Liveblogs from the Times and the Telegraph have the news: Gordon Brown entered Buckingham Palace at 7:30pm London time (2:30pm Eastern time) to resign and advise the Queen to ask Conservative party leader David Cameron to form a government. Cameron arrived at Buckingham Palace at 8:08pm (3:08 Eastern time) and the Queen offered him a chance to form a government. He left at 8:40.
So party control of the British government has been transferred for only the second time since 1979, and David Cameron is prime minister. I witnessed this transfer of power standing outside Buckingham Palace in 1997, when it took place around noon the day after the election, but I was unable to remain in London long enough after last Thursday’s election to do so again–in part because I was scheduled to be part of an American Enterprise panel on the British election and its implications for American politics this morning. It was a fascinating discussion, with excellent original points made by analyst William Schneider, pollster Stanley Greenberg and AEI’s Henry Olsen.
We still await the terms of the agreement between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.
