BRITAIN VOTES – AT 8:56 A.M. ET:  Britain votes today in a national election that can have a profound effect on British foreign policy.  From Fox: 

Polls opened across the United Kingdom Thursday as British voters were due to make their choice in a parliamentary election that is likely to be the closest in decades -- and is unlikely to produce a clear winner.

Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives and Ed Miliband's Labour Party are running neck and neck, with most opinion polls showing the parties tied or separated by one or two percentage points. That means neither party is likely to win a majority of Parliament's 650 seats.

That in turn could set up days or even weeks of backroom dealing before a coalition government is crafted. The incumbent Cameron has experience of that. When the dust settled from the last election in 2010, the Conservatives sat 20 seats short of an outright majority. However, within five days, Cameron had brokered a deal with the centrist Liberal Democrats, led by current Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

Much has changed in five years. Both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are projected to lose seats, though just how many is unclear. The past year-and-a-half has also seen the rise of the anti-immigration, anti-European Union United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which currently sits third in opinion polls, though Britain's electoral system means it can win at most a handful of seats. However, those seats will likely come by stealing Conservative voters.

Miliband's Labourites have not had it all their own way, either. Last fall's Scottish independence referendum, which ended in defeat for the separatists, has nonetheless resulted in increased power for the Scottish National Party (SNP), led by Nicola Sturgeon. Some pre-election polls have projected a near-total wipeout for Labour in its traditional stronghold north of the border, with the Daily Record newspaper projecting that the SNP could end up with 52 seats in Parliament. That's an increase of 46 seats over 2010, 34 of which would be taken from Labour Members of Parliament.

If the SNP end up as the third or fourth-largest party in Parliament after this election, that would put pressure on Miliband to agree to a coalition government with Sturgeon in order to become Prime Minister. Miliband has said that such a deal is off the table, but Conservatives have warned that a Labour premiership would inevitably resulted in the Scottish nationalists having undue influence over British politics.

COMMENT:   We await results.  I have a vision of Obama praying for a Labor victory.

May 7,  2015