Next week, Britain votes in its first general election in five years. Some aspects of its politics will be familiar to Americans. Polls show voters are dissatisfied with politicians of both parties, cynical about whether they will keep their promises and closely divided between two major parties which have been in existence for more than 100 years.

But there are differences as well, in contrast to decades when British and American politics seemed to move in tandem — the 1980s of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the 1990s of Bill Clinton’s New Democrats and Tony Blair’s New Labour.