UK Election Night

[mitchymo]

first past the post is just wrong....i don't know why it has taken til now for people to click, suppose it has been carefully hidden from the public gaze in a miraculous Lab-Con pact to keep control between either or.

 

[mitchymo]

Vote Joll/Lemon 2014 for your dreams to come true!!!
(and to see the blatant cherry-picking of all the best policies from left and right hehehe).

Now, i'm open minded and not at all xenophobic but i draw the line at voting for a welsh fruitcake.

 

[D_Tim McGnaw]

first past the post is just wrong....i don't know why it has taken til now for people to click, suppose it has been carefully hidden from the public gaze in a miraculous Lab-Con pact to keep control between either or.

I absolutely could not agree more! FPTP is not any form of credible system for any democracy. Multiple seat constituencies and Single Transferable Vote proportional representation is the only way forward.

 

[Jason]

Welcome back Mitchy! The night is looking up! Just waiting for a few results to come in before I get some kip - guess they will firm up projections in about an hour.

 

[798686]

Now, i'm open minded and not at all xenophobic but i draw the line at voting for a welsh fruitcake.

It's called Bara Brith, grrr! :wink:

 

[mitchymo]

It's called Bara Brith, grrr! :wink:

Sounds dictatorial if you ask me.....

 

[798686]

The exit poll projection onto Big Ben looks cool.

 

[Jason]

I don't get the results. We seem to be seeing Lab to Con swings of around 8% and also a Lib to Con swing, maybe 4%. These would actually put Con into overall majority territory.

Con have just won Kingswood. This is one that should in theory put them into majority territory. And they've romped home here!

 

[Jason]

Betfair projection at 1.26am:

Con 332
Lab 216
Lib 73
Other 29

Don't know what to make of this.

 

[swordfishME]

I don't follow British elections as closely but this seems to be somewhat of a disappointment for the Tories. A year ago no one would have thought that they would not have one this outright

What exactly happens in a hung parliament? Does the old lady get to decide which party will govern? If so, any ideas on how she votes?

 

[Jason]

Swordfish, people spin every result.

Lab had an enormous lead at the last election and for Con to overturn it would need the biggest swing for 80 years. Right now it looks as if we are absolutely on the line. In terms of a Con achievement this is a big one. It might be that it is not quite enough.

In a hung parliament Gordon Brown stays in power and tries to make an agreement with others to govern. Ultimately the test is whether he can get through a Queen's Speech, ie whether parliament will support a statement of his programme. In practice he is supposed to act like a gentleman. If Con are just short of a majority he would probably not feel he could try to form a government. Right now the 9 or so NI Unionist MPs could hold the power (they would probably support Con).

 

[D_Tim McGnaw]

I'm predicting a national swing to the Tories of 6%

 

[D_Tim McGnaw]

Swordfish, people spin every result.

Lab had an enormous lead at the last election and for Con to overturn it would need the biggest swing for 80 years. Right now it looks as if we are absolutely on the line. In terms of a Con achievement this is a big one. It might be that it is not quite enough.

In a hung parliament Gordon Brown stays in power and tries to make an agreement with others to govern. Ultimately the test is whether he can get through a Queen's Speech, ie whether parliament will support a statement of his programme. In practice he is supposed to act like a gentleman. If Con are just short of a majority he would probably not feel he could try to form a government. Right now the 9 or so NI Unionist MPs could hold the power (they would probably support Con).

Act like a gentleman? You mean ignore the constitution? Presumably you'd just like the Labour party just to throw in the towel right now regardless of the actual national vote.

 

[B_crackoff]

So the Lds. %0% want them.

Bollocks.

What a poor showing. Lembit Opik out, & I'm told Romsey will go by my bro. LDs looking glum.

It's all over rover for the Lib Dems.

 

[swordfishME]

Thanks Jason for the answer.

Regardless of the party they support, does anyone think that a minority government will be able to survive for 5 years!?!

Also it is publicly known which party the Queen votes for?

 

[Jason]

The Queen does not have a vote. Rather Parliament is her Parliament and governs in her name with power from her.

A minority government - or even a slim majority government - will probably last until the autumn. Then we can expect Con to request another election to get a mandate for a programme of austerity. It is messy.

 

[B_crackoff]

Bloody hell. The only money I will lose is on the LDs.

Internet hype!

No one wanted them at all. What a joke. No wonder they need STF!

If you look at the uncertain to votes, they were mainly 50%+ LDs!

All the hype on twitter. Just shows Twitter is no representative demographic.

This willscrew the LDs big time for the next election, because no one will believe they can win, even if they do well at the polls.

When push came to shove, they were only 1% up!

They've even lost seats.

Get Clegg out!!!!!

 

[TurkeyWithaSunburn]

The Queen does not have a vote. Rather Parliament is her Parliament and governs in her name with power from her.

The Queen doesn't vote? She's forbidden from voting?

 

[B_crackoff]

The Queen doesn't vote? She's forbidden from voting?

Anyone with a peerage(Lord up) cannot vote.

If she wants to vote, she can abdicate:biggrin1:

 

[dandelion]

Swordfish, people spin every result.

Lab had an enormous lead at the last election and for Con to overturn it would need the biggest swing for 80 years. Right now it looks as if we are absolutely on the line. In terms of a Con achievement this is a big one. It might be that it is not quite enough.

What Jason means is that last time Labour got 35% of the votes and the conservatives got 32% of the vote. This time so far conservative have 36% of the vote and labour 29%. In other words, labour used to have an enormous lead of 3% and now the big achievement of the conservatives is to persuade 5% of the population to change their minds. In other words, more than 90% of the population voted exactly the same as last time.

Ask me, getting 1/3 of the votes is not an 'enormous lead'. Its pretty pathetic. The UK voting system is designed to amplify the difference between parties so that a tiny difference becomes a complete victory. In this case the conservatives have failed to persuade even the small number of voters necessary that they are better than the others.

Even apart from all the faults in the system I just mentioned, we also still do not known who the population really wanted to win. At the start of the campaign pollsters said 50% wanted liberals to win but only 20% intended to vote for them. Roughly 40% intended to vote conservative and 30% labour. Very roughly, this is the result in numbers of votes which we actually got at the end of the campaign. I havnt seen any numbers to say whether 50% of people also still really wanted the liberals to win. I expect they did.

The system is totally screwed. This country has a big centre-left majority which ought to be giving us rock solid stable governments time after time. But because it favours small changes we get flips from one load of absolute rulers to the other and total reversals of national policy. On the one hand the system favours the conservatives in that it allows them to win with a tiny lead, but on the other the system also tends to mean there is a built in labour advantage because of the way voters are distributed. about 2/3 of seats never change hands and might as well not have bothered having an election.

Now isnt that a fair result?

Swordfish, the principle of British government is that whoever can command a majority of votes in the house of commons gets to be prime minister. The Queen appoints him, and I presume could dismiss him, but in reality there would not be much point in doing anything else. All MPs are dismissed when parliament is dissolved but ministers remain ministers until they resign or are pushed.

So Brown remains prime minister until such time as something decisive happens. He could choose to resign, but that seems pointless and in fact wholly against the national interest Someone has to be in charge. If there is no clear winner, then quite correctly he should stay where he is until a vote of the house of commons shows who has a majority. Theres lots of talk, mostly whipped up by conservatives that he ought to resign, but in reality this is stupid until there is someone in a position to replace him.

The only time the queens choice might matter is where absolutely no one can command a majority, which may be the case now. We may not know for days because the result still seems very tight and counting isnt finished yet. In that case Brown gets to stay put until he gets defeated in the commons, then most likely the queen would ask Cameron. If he cant manage she might call for any other volunteers. Then she would have a choice. Either force them to carry on and decide things issue by issue, or dissolve parliament and have another go. Depends how it goes. I would rather favour leaving them to it for a bit.

As things stand the conservatives could be immediate winners if they agreed to rule in partnership with either lab or lib. Unfortunately they dont believe in reforming the voting system, which as the only right wing party favours them quite a lot. So they almost certainly will refuse any coalition with a party which insists on a change to a fair voting system. Lib and lab are much closer together and might be considered the most natural coalition. Unfortunately the predicted result is that either big block would still need the support of most of the 30 or so members representing minor parties. Which is very messy. Or very interesting.

Incidentally, there is another whole can of worms: the conservatives have won in england but got only one mp in Scotland. In Scotland labour did better than last time. The conservatives are the party of rural england and the established upper class.

And just as a final confusion, one candidate died so the that election will now take place in 3 weeks time. Quite a few places saw big queues to vote and some people were refused votes because they didnt get inside in time. If there are any seats where there was a very narrow result this may yet lead to legal challenges. Seems to affect at least one seat. So thats a couple which may not be finally decided for weeks.