TIME：Cameron and Clegg: Two Heads Better Than One

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A common lament among the citizens of liberal democracies is that politicians don't listen to them. On May 6, Britons turned that complaint on its head, ignoring the insistent warnings of their political classes that failure to elect a majority government could lead only to chaos and despair. In a collective act of joyful bloody-mindedness, the nation somehow found a way to subvert the electoral system that had long upheld the duopoly of rule by the Conservative and Labour parties.

The outcome of this mutiny is revolutionary. Though his party won the most seats in the House of Commons, it failed to secure an overall majority, leading to a so-called hung Parliament. So David Cameron, the new Prime Minister, has been forced into partnership with the Liberal Democrats. Thus starts the first formal coalition to rule Britain since World War II.

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It's off to a pretty good start, promising an emergency budget within 50 days to address Britain's looming deficit. Cameron's first public utterance as Prime Minister paid graceful tribute to his Labour predecessors for leaving a country "more open at home, more compassionate abroad." What he did not go on to say — it may have struck too close to home — was that such openness has proved inimical to the preservation of the class-ridden, convention-honoring, pliant Britain that Conservative and Labour leaders have long relied on.

Ah, unruly Britannia: to focus purely on the new order in Downing Street is to miss the deeper significance of Britain's election. Voters elected a hung Parliament because they wanted to — in order to circumscribe the power of the politicians who presume to govern them. Britons are still subjects of Queen Elizabeth II, who, as their country's unwritten constitution demanded, graciously accepted the resignation of Gordon Brown and conferred the premiership on Cameron. But they're also citizens of a new world of their own making. It's one the Westminster establishment had better get used to, fast.

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Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader and now the Deputy Prime Minister, says he's ready for a new age. "I hope this is the start of the new politics I have always believed in — diverse, plural and where politicians with different points of view find a way to work together," he said, hailing the coalition deal. The Lib Dems emerged from the election holding the balance of power, though they did less well than seemed likely during the campaign. Britons, in truth, seemed unhappy with all the choices on election day. Like pub landlords wearied by the tiresome antics of their customers, they were clearly ready to call time on Labour's 13-year rule. But voters remained unconvinced by the oxymoronic positioning of Cameron's Conservatives as the agents of change. Despite a better-funded campaign than their rivals', Conservatives' support ebbed as election day neared.

Pollsters discovered one reason for this. Swaths of respondents said they'd prefer a hung Parliament. The mordantly witty response to this finding — that Britons would prefer their Parliament hung — contained more than a grain of truth. Last year's exposés about the misuse of parliamentary expenses amplified a mistrust of politicians that had bloomed during the Blair years — that time when spin led the black arts of politics and the Prime Minister took Britain into a war that turned out disastrously.