Cameron leads UK coalition government

Nick Clegg, a former MEP, to be deputy prime minister; William Hague, a Eurosceptic, to serve as foreign minister.

David Cameron, the leader of the UK Conservatives, will today complete work on the formation of a new British government after securing a coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats.

The new prime minister was asked to form a government by Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday (11 May) after Gordon Brown resigned as prime minister and as leader of his Labour party.

Brown’s resignation came after the Liberal Democrats and their leader Nick Clegg abandoned coalition talks with Labour yesterdayand chose to finalise a coalition with the Conservatives.

Both parties approved the coalition deal late yesterday after five days of intensive negotiations. The talks were launched a day after Thursday’s (6 May) elections left the UK with a hung parliament, in which no party with a majority of the 650 seats.

“Our country has a hung parliament where no party has an overall majority and we have some deep and pressing problems,” Cameron told reporters outside 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the prime minister.

Cameron stressed the coalition was needed to make sure he could tackle the UK’s growing debt and deficit problems, which are undermining the country’s economic recovery after the global economic and financial crisis. His new government will also have to tackle the UK’s mission in Afghanistan and reforms to the country’s public education and healthcare systems.

“I believe that is the right way to provide the country with the strong, the stable, the good and decent government that we need so badly,” he added.

Cameron’s party won the most seats, 306, but were short of the 326 needed to secure a majority. His coalition with the Liberal Democrats, which won 57 seats, puts the Conservatives back in power after 13 years of opposition. Labour held on to 258 seats in the House of Commons.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat tie-up will be the UK’s first coalition government since 1945 and gives the country its youngest prime minister in 200 years. Cameron is 43 years old.

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Cameron moved quickly to appoint William Hague as his foreign secretary and George Osborne as finance minister.

The acclaimed ‘king-maker’ Clegg and his Liberals will get five cabinet posts. Clegg was named deputy prime minister, while Vince Cable is expected to be named minister in charge of business and banking issues later today.

While the two parties see eye-to-eye on economic issues they remain far part on the European Union, electoral reform and immigration policy. The eurosceptic Cameron has called for powers to be clawed back from the EU to the UK’s national government while Clegg favours closer co-ordination.

“I hope this is the start of the new politics I have always believed in,” Clegg said.

As leader of the opposition, Cameron pulled his Conservatives from the centre-right European People’s Party in the European Parliament, a move that angered both French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Clegg is a former MEP and in the 1990s worked in the private office of the UK’s former European commissioner, Leon Brittan, a Conservative.

Cameron received congratulatory calls from US President Barack Obama and Merkel late yesterday. Obama invited Cameron and his wife to Washington, DC in July.

José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, also congratulated Cameron on his appointment as prime minister.

“I am confident that you will chart the right course to steer the United Kingdom out of the current crisis and back on the path of sustainable growth,” Barroso said in a letter to Cameron.

“Many of the challenges ahead, delivering economic recovery, fighting global poverty, tackling climate change, ensuring energy security, are common across the European Union and require a common response,” said Barroso. “I look forward to working closely with you on these and other issues, such as boosting the internal market and promoting smarter regulation”.