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.
