UK Students Pleased With Support From Peers During Election

UPDATED: May 12, 2015, at 9:15 p.m.

British students said they generally felt that their peers at Harvard showed interest during the recent elections in the United Kingdom last Thursday.

In the election, Prime Minister David Cameron retained his position as the UK’s Conservative Party received 37 percent of votes and 331 seats in Parliament. The Labour Party, led by Ed Miliband, received 232 seats.

“A lot of people were asking about it,” Yasmin Z. Sachee ’18 said. According to Sachee, who is from England, the British Club hosted a viewing party of election coverage for British students. Other students hosted individual viewing parties as well.

In addition, the Institute of Politics hosted a “General Election Party” on Thursday, inviting its attendees to “learn about the world’s oldest parliamentary democracy,” according to their website. The Center for European Studies also hosted a panel on the election on April 30 with speaker Edward Fieldhouse, who served as principal investigator of the “2015 British Election Study” at the University of Manchester.

Hannah R. Phillips, a student from Scotland who watched the BBC coverage in her room, said that student interest in the election “depends on who you hang out with.”

“My British friends were obviously very concerned,” she said.

Nicholas J. M. Bonstow ’17 agreed, adding that most British students were “very engaged” with the election. Bonstow is from England and is an inactive Crimson editor.

Despite the positive reactions, Sachee and Phillips added that discussion around American elections will always be more prominent.

“American elections are going to be bigger because it’s right here, but I think there was enough awareness,” Sachee said.

“I know a lot of Americans who know what’s happening, but I didn’t expect anything more than there was,” Phillips added.

According to Bonstow, Americans can “learn so much from British politics.”

—Staff writer Jalin P. Cunningham can be reached at jalincunningham@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @JalinCunningham.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: May 12, 2015

An earlier version of this article misstated the percent of the popular vote earned by the Conservative Party. In fact, it received 37 percent of the vote, not 51.