BRITAIN: A Crippling Election That Nobody Won

It may well enter British history as the election nobody won, a paradigm of a poor and poorly timed good news-bad news joke. The British voters provided something for everyone—but not enough for anyone to govern effectively.In the process, as they did in the last election, the voters also upset the best estimates of pollsters and pundits.

Thus Britain's Labor Party won the most seats in the House of Commons —but did not win a majority. The Tories took the popular vote— 11.9 million v. 11.7 million for Labor—but they also lost 26 seats and their comfortable...