U.K. Election's Big Question: Who's the Next Prime Minister -- and Can He Rule?

As dawn broke over London Friday morning after a laboriously slow night of vote counting in Britain's most muddled election in three decades, it was far easier to count the losers than to identify the next prime minister.

Exit polls had predicted a hung Parliament, with the Conservatives falling shy of a majority. And the actual returns (with 648 of the 650 constituencies reporting, as of Friday afternoon, London time) appeared to confirm this forecast, with the electoral swing from Labour to the Tories a slightly less-than-expected 5 percent. The BBC projected that the Conservatives would secure 305 seats, Labour 258 and the Liberal Democrats a surprisingly low 57. If the Conservatives could eek out 314 seats, they would probably be able to forge ahead with a minority government, but that appears unlikely. In light of the hung Parliament, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has asked his Cabinet secretary to instruct civil servants to pave the way for coalition talks among the parties. These talks will likely begin tomorrow.

The governing career of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who inherited the keys to 10 Downing Street from Tony Blair, may well be over, as Labour has unequivocally lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since 1997, losing nearly 100 seats at present count. Media darling Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who dazzled in Britain's national TV campaign debates, failed to make the electoral inroads that would have vaulted his perpetual third party into the political big leagues.

But has Conservative leader David Cameron actually won? Addressing his constituency in the wee hours Friday morning, Cameron unequivocally declared, "The Labour government has lost its mandate to govern this country." But there was also tentativeness rather than exultation to Cameron's words as he used phrases such as "whatever happens tonight" and "whatever the future may hold."

In his first major post-election address Friday afternoon, Cameron reached out to Clegg and the Liberal Democrats by explicitly offering them an opportunity to join the Tories either in forming a government or at least a working partnership, with Conservatives in charge. But beneath the rhetoric about a "stronger, more collaborative" union, the contours of the offer were vague, especially regarding the Lib Dems' pet issue, electoral reform.

In theory, this should have been a breakthrough election for the Tories, who a year ago held a lopsided 14 percentage-point lead over Labour in the polls. With worldwide stock markets plunging Thursday because of fears of a Greek default on its debt and the headlines highlighting street fighting in Athens over austerity measures, the political mood and the desire for economic stability seemed to be moving in the Conservatives' direction. But with an estimated 7 percent vote swing needed to produce a Tory majority, the returns suggest that the Conservatives have fallen short.

The 1972 classic movie "The Candidate" ends with newly elected Robert Redford asking plaintively, "What do we do now?" That question will be asked all over the British political landscape in the hours ahead. Under Britain's unwritten constitution, Brown, as the current prime minister, will get the first chance to form a government, despite Labor's electoral shortfall.

There was much talk last night by senior Labour officials of a "Progressive Alliance" between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and senior party officials are reportedly busy working out details of what that plan might look like. But they will not approach the Lib Dems with an offer until all seats are counted later this afternoon. And even then, whether such an alliance could go through will hinge on whether -- together -- the two parties can garner a majority of seats in Parliament.

But even if Labour and the Lib Dems manage to eek out a majority, it's unclear if the Lib Dems would go for such a coalition government. Clegg went on record during the campaign as saying that the party that wins the most votes ought to have the first shot at creating a government, a promise he reiterated this morning. That statement would appear to give the Tories the green light to form a minority government.

On the other hand, a Lib-Lab alliance might also be Clegg's only hope of achieving electoral reform on some form of proportional representation, something Labour has indicated it supports. Some pundits think that Clegg is shrewdly giving the Conservatives a chance to enact electoral reform -- something the Tories have long opposed -- so that the door remains open for the Lib Dems to team up with Labour subsequently. Brown has said that he respects the right of the Lib Dems to speak first with the Tories before speaking with Labour. But he has made it very clear that, in his view, this election has provided a mandate for electoral reform.

But Cameron might win enough votes to govern through alliances with minor regional parties. There's also the possibility that the Tories (who are much more centrist than the Republican Party in the United States) might reach an accommodation with Clegg by offering the Lib Dems electoral reform and the proportional representation system in Parliament the party craves.

Not to be lost in all this speculation is that the behind-the-scenes negotiations to form a new government (no matter who prevails) will provide 84-year-old Queen Elizabeth with a rare substantive, rather than symbolic, role in British politics. There is also some chance -- with shades of the historic 2000 Florida recount -- that the hundreds of voters who were denied the chance to vote last night due to long queues, low staffing and an insufficient number of paper ballots might prompt a recount in several marginal districts. In light of all this uncertainty, it's possible that the country might remain in limbo until as late as May 25 while this all gets worked out through inter-party negotiations. Brown, at least as of this morning, did not look like he was about to move on very quickly.

The election was, in a sense, a referendum on Gordon Brown and the shopworn notion of New Labour. The hardest political challenge that faced Brown was how to deal with hard times. The first words of his opening statement in the first television debate April 15 signaled the difficulties that Labor faced in holding power for the fourth successive election: "We've just been going through the biggest global financial crisis in our lives, and we're moving from recession to recovery, and I believe we're moving on a road to prosperity for all."

The implicit argument sounded eerily similar to one that Barack Obama is prone to make: Things could have been so much worse if I were not in power. The problem is that the British budget deficit is 11.5 percent of gross national product -- with almost all economic experts forecasting dire austerity measures ahead. While unemployment is lower than in America at 8 percent, it still represents the highest level of joblessness since 1996. So the idea that Britain is "on a road to prosperity for all" is sufficiently dubious that it suggested that Brown, after 13 years of Labor governments, is out of touch with the economic realities facing the voters.

In a sense, Brown, who waited almost as long for Tony Blair to pass the baton as Prince Charles has been waiting to become king, was probably facing doom from the moment he finally took office at the tail end of the economic boom in 2007. By early 2009, the polls and portents all but suggested that drug-plagued Amy Winehouse had a better chance of winning a general election than Brown.

In a campaign where both 43-year-old Cameron (bidding to be the youngest prime minister since the Napoleonic Wars) and Clegg, also 43, exuded the youthful telegenic presence that has almost become a prerequisite for political success in Britain (see Blair, Tony), the 59-year-old Brown seemed the embodiment of the dour Scotsman. It certainly did not help the efforts of political spinmeisters to humanize Brown when last week a lapel microphone, which should have been turned off, caught the prime minister complaining to aides that a 65-year-old woman was "a bigot." Equally damning as the indictment of a voter deeply troubled by Eastern European immigration was Brown's acidic commentary about his own staff: "That was a disaster – they should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? Ridiculous."

There will be a temptation to use the British results and the Conservative gains as a template for American politics both this fall and in 2012. But glib trans-Atlantic parallels make about as much sense as moving Manchester United to the American League. American political consultants returning from Britain (and all three parties employed them) marvel at how much social-class aspirations and resentments shape voting behavior. Also, Labour has been in power for a nearly unprecedented 13 years and even a buoyant economy might not have staved off voter fatigue.

But in the end, the next occupant of 10 Downing Street may barely have time to unpack before he faces another election. Coalition and minority governments in modern British history almost never last a year before a new election is called. Given the pressures on the pound from the sovereign debt crisis afflicting Europe, this may not be an optimum political moment for anyone to serve as prime minister. In fact, Thursday's losers (with the probable exception of Brown) may actually be future winners. Which is why the British version of the perpetual campaign -- all aimed at the next general election -- began the moment the polls closed Thursday night as Big Ben chimed 10 times.