UK Voters Reject Voting Revamp

Bloomberg reports:

The U.K. rejected an overhaul of the voting system for national elections, a victory for Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron at the expense of his Liberal Democrat deputy, Nick Clegg. Both parties said their coalition government will stick to its deficit-reduction strategy.

With results from more than half the 440 districts declared, almost 70 percent of voters in yesterday’s referendum were against the new system that Clegg backed. That was after the Liberal Democrats suffered their worst local-election results since the party was formed in 1988.

Clegg was joined by other senior party members in insisting the Liberal Democrats remain committed to the coalition government’s plan to eliminate the bulk of the budget deficit by 2015. All said the relationship with the Conservatives would now grow more formal, a sign of tension after the referendum’s “No” campaign made a series of personal attacks on Clegg.

“There is enormous anger across the Liberal Democrats at the tactics which were employed by the ‘No’ campaign,” Energy Secretary Chris Huhne told the BBC. “Clearly we know that the ‘No’ campaign was funded and run completely by the Conservative Party.”

The “No” campaign had focused its fire on Clegg, criticizing him for reversing a pre-election pledge to oppose any increase in student tuition fees. That decision was taken in coordination with the Conservatives as the two parties sought to slash government spending during their first year in power. Huhne said the attacks on his party over the policy would make it more difficult to persuade Liberal Democrats to agree to compromises in future.