Word: parliament
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...something even better last week. In the most impressive electoral sweep by any British party since 1945, Thatcher's Conservatives won 397 seats in the new 650-member Parliament, giving the Prime Minister a thumping majority of 144 seats over the combined opposition parties. The Labor Party, by contrast, captured only 209 seats, while the new Social Democratic/Liberal Alliance picked up 23.* Thatcher becomes the first Conservative Prime Minister in this century to be re-elected to a second term, a feat unmatched even by such illustrious entries on the stairway wall as Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan. Beaming down...
...There is no talk yet about a merger of the S.D.P. and the Liberals, but at some point, if the two groups work together well in Parliament, a marriage might be proposed. Having ended up with such a large chunk of the popular vote but so few seats in Parliament, the Alliance hopes to win support for one of the major planks in its manifesto: proportional representation, an electoral system under which seats are awarded to parties in direct ratio to their popular vote. But since Britain's current system greatly benefits the two established parties, both the Tories...
Deputy Leader David Owen, a physician by training, who was first elected to Parliament in 1966, campaigned superbly, leading some newspapers to speculate how much better the S.D.P. might have done with him at the top instead of Jenkins. The "other David," as he is commonly called to distinguish him from Steel, would dearly love to be leader and will probably not discourage a movement to displace Jenkins...
...Northern Ireland, which sends 17 representatives to Parliament, the election made history. After years of boycotting British ballots, Sinn Fein (Ourselves Alone), the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, picked up a seat. The winner, Gerry Adams, campaigned unashamedly in support of the "armed struggle" against British rule. He ended up polling 16,000 votes in his west Belfast district, 6,000 more than the constituency's highly esteemed Member of Parliament, Gerard Fitt, a Catholic. Adams has no intention of taking his newly won seat at Westminster: his party does not recognize Parliament...
...have waited for this day for a very long time," Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci told the parliament before reading the declaration at 3 p.m. on Sunday. "The independence of Kosovo marks the end of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia," he said, adding that "Kosovo was a unique case that should not set a precedent." Outside, the crowd cheered in the biggest celebration Pristina has ever seen. Ethnic Albanians started their celebrations on Saturday, with cars circling the streets of the capital draped with the flags of Albania and the United States, dancing to the sound of traditional...