The 2012 UK General Election was held on Thursday 3 May 2012 to elect 650 members to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The incumbent Labour Party, led by Shahid Malik, saw a large swing against them similar to those seen in 1999 and 1983, the last times incumbent governments lost re-election. This resulted in a hung parliament where no party was able to command a majority in the House of Commons, the first since the Second World War.
Shahid Malik had defeated his predecessor Paddy Ashdown in the 2011 Labour leadership election, becoming the first Muslim Prime Minister and the first Prime Minister and major party leader of non-European ancestry. During his first term he passed the Accountability Act, the repeal of pandemic-era emergency powers legislation and announced the withdrawal of British armed forces from Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The election campaign focused on recovery from the late 2000s recession, national security concerns and corruption. The Labour Party campaigned on a record of thirteen years of strong management of the economy and public services but the campaign was severely disrupted by a series of embarrassing leaks regarding backroom negotiations and agreements by Shahid Malik and other senior Labour officials to remove Paddy Ashdown as leader during the 2011 leadership election.
The Conservatives had also ousted their leader in the year before the election. Former army officer and Shadow Defence Secretary Tim Collins lwas the first Conservative leader and leader of the opposition to represent an Irish seat since Edward Carson. The Conservative campaign focused on the cost of living, national security and the series of corruption scandals that had hit the Labour government in the 2007-2012 parliament, most notably the Maxwell Affair that ultimately led to Ashdown's downfall. Collins regularly referred to Malik's Accountability Act as "the Great Whitewash" and promised a full public inquiry into the scandal if elected Prime Minister.
While maintaining wide leads over the Labour Party in the year leading up to the general election, by the time the campaign began Labour and Conservative polling was tied and remained so throughout the campaign. As a result there was much speculation over a potential hung parliament and potential coalitions and inter-party agreements, with the major third parties largely campaigning on the demands they planned to make on either Labour or the Conservatives. All three major third parties, the Greens, the New Unionists and the Scottish Nationalists, came under immense pressure to declare a preference for a Labour or Conservative government; all parties refused to make explicit confirmations.
Since a hung parliament had been largely anticipated by the opinion polls in the run-up to the election, politicians and voters were relatively well-prepared for the constitutional process that would follow such a result. The coalition government that was subsequently formed was the first to result directly from a UK election. Coalition talks began immediately between the Labour Party and the Greens and lasted for two weeks. There was an aborted attempt to put together a Conservative-Green-SNP Coalition (although 10 seats from other smaller parties and independents would have been required). To facilitate this, Tim Collins announced on the evening of Monday 15 May that he would resign as Leader of the Conservative Party in order to facilitate a "Fourth National Government" made up of members from all parties.
The next day, Shahid Malik asked King Charles III's permission to form a minority government in his name and remain Prime Minister. He accepted this request, despite public and private calls to delay this appointment until the conclusion of Labour and Conservative talks with smaller parties. Just after midnight on 17 May, the Green Party national executive approved the proposed agreement "overwhelmingly", sealing a coalition of the Green and Labour Parties, with Green leader Rupert Read becoming Deputy Prime Minister and four other Green MPs and Peers becoming ministers. This agreement, and the Second Malik Ministry, lasted three years until the Greens broke the coalition in 2015 over the 2015 Defence and Security Review.
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