UK Politics Thread

[deanb]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32235317

 

Breakdown of what'll potentially happen with a hung government.

 

Gonna be fun to see how long it takes until we get a government. Probably gonna be a minority. a decade without a majority government is gonna be fun.

[TheMightyEthan]

The part about minority governments confused me.  How are Ministers selected?  I would have thought it was a majority vote of parliament, but if that's the case a minority party wouldn't be able to elect their own government.

[Thursday Next]

The part about minority governments confused me.  How are Ministers selected?  I would have thought it was a majority vote of parliament, but if that's the case a minority party wouldn't be able to elect their own government.

 

Each of the 650 constituencies votes for a representative (as in the general public vote for an individual to represent them in government, this individual will be aligned with one of the parties or an independent). If your party has less than 326 representatives, you cannot guarantee winning votes by simple majority (assuming no rebellions from your party), you therefore have a "minority government" and have to rely upon other parties to vote alongside you.

 

If anything it makes a government more democratic because people outside of the 51% who broadly favour the majority party have more of a say.

Edited May 5, 2015 by Thursday Next

[deanb]

Deals n such I presume? I dunno. Could hang around a couple weeks without any thing getting sorted n have a bit of a constitutional crisis on our hands to work it out.

 

The last lost made a coalition, but that seems to be almost universally ruled out I guess to encourage tactical voting but who knows how it'll pan out on over the next week.. End of day popular vote might give the parties only 33% of the vote as polls indicate but could maybe end up with enough constituencies won to take a majority (or largest clear minority) of seats.

[TheMightyEthan]

@TN: Okay, so like the PM still has to win a majority of the parliamentary votes to become PM?  It's just you get votes from other parties in a less formal way than when actually forming a coalition?

 

I was just confused because it made it sound like a minority party could install a government on their own, without the cooperation of any other MPs.

[Thursday Next]

Not quite.

 

1. The party votes internally for their leader. This person is also one of the 650 representatives and is aligned with that party.

2. The public vote for a representative to occupy one of the 650 seats.

3. If a party has 326 (or more) of the 650 seats, then whoever they chose as their leader will be the PM.

 

You can only be PM if you can run the government. The most certain way to do that is to have your party sitting in 326 or more seats. Otherwise, you can form a coalition with another party to make up the numbers. Or you can say "fuck it" and try to run a government with less than a majority and hope that you can bargain with other representatives to get your policies voted through one at a time.

[TheMightyEthan]

Okay, so if nobody's a majority, and they don't want to form a coalition but instead want to form a minority government, how is the PM and other government officials selected?  Can the minority party just decide even though they don't have a majority of the seats?

[Thursday Next]

Formally, the government writes a speech that the Queen will deliver upon appointing a new government. This speech sets out the policies of the government for that term. Before this speech is delivered to the Queen to be read out, it must be voted for by a simple majority of the 650 elected officials forming the "House of Commons" or "Parliament" ("MPs").

 

Clearly, if your party has 326 MPs, it's a slam dunk. Your speech will get the necessary votes, and your party is invited to form a government with you at the helm. If you have say 300, and the third biggest party has 30, then you can agree to form a coalition, they will add their votes to yours, and your speech is voted in etc...

 

If you form a minority government then there is a chance your speech will be voted down and you will not be able to form a government. There's then another period of negotiation while everyone tries to get a set of policies together that can achieve a majority.

[TheMightyEthan]

Okay, so as a minority party as long as your policy statement gets accepted and voted in you can form a government, even if you haven't formally made a coalition with anyone. Did I get it right that time?

[deanb]

And failing that: they joust.

[Thursday Next]

Okay, so as a minority party as long as your policy statement gets accepted and voted in you can form a government, even if you haven't formally made a coalition with anyone. Did I get it right that time?

 

Yup. Haha, sorry, it's difficult to explain (or rather, I find it difficult).

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Exit polls are... interesting:

 

Conservatives largest party with 316 seats, Lab 239, LD 10, SNP 58, UKIP 2, Green 2, PC 4, Others 19

 

If it's accurate (it was last time) then we may end up with another Con/Lib coalition which would be ironic considering people spent the last 5 years saying, "This isn't what we voted for".

[deanb]

Last election were:

Tories: 306

Labour: 258

Lib Dem: 57 (holy crap that'd be a loss of 47 seats :/)

SNP: 6 (yeah, that's a major jump, though not from Lib Dems)

Green: 1

Plaid Cymru: 3

 

Seriously, good on SNP. They're likely to take the whole of Scotland. Guess folks got pissed at the Referendum.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

what do you mean about the referendum? Just to warn you, I'm seriously unimpressed with the scottish situation so I'll maybe not reply if I think I'm going to piss myself off.

[deanb]

It ended up fairly close, 55% to 45%. And the end result was mainly tories pushing essentially for devolution of English powers, rather than "huh, nearly half of the country north of the bordered wanted to leave us, maybe we should treat em a bit nicer".

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Deleted rant. After going through my fb feed today I just do not want to get involved. Definitely true when they say don't talk politics with friends

Edited May 8, 2015 by TheFlyingGerbil

[deanb]

I don't have much of a horse in the race, beyond the theoreticals of power and business getting pulled from the North East, what little is left this day n age, should Scotland have dropped corporation tax or similar moves.

 

On the other hand would have been interesting to see what it'd be like to carve up the UK. But we've had this discussion before.

[deanb]

SNP have taken Scotland by a landslide, 56 of 59 constituencies (up fro 6 last time around)

Tories at moment of typing are handful away from a majority. Slim one at that though, got a couple still to call.

SNP are third largest by seats, but UKIP are third largest by votes (though thankfully only the one seat so hardly any sway, but says something of some of the people living here).

Lib Dems got destroyred, though they were up a fair bit last time around so had higher to fall from.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results

[SomTervo]

Its all fucked

 

Everything's fucked

 

Goodbye NHS

 

Goodbye people without opportunities receiving any sort of support

 

I literally stood at the polling station for like 5 minutes just staring at the list. Not a single good option. No party at Westminster is a good choice. It was all just a case of 'lesser evils'.

 

Eventually I voted Labour, because our local representative is labour and a legit good guy. I marginally agree with labour and think Milliband could be an intelligent leader even though he's a doofus, and that sealed the deal. It was the least of all the evils. The least dark shade of grey.

 

And labour didn't even get in.

 

That continues the trend of every single vote I have ever made in the UK being a wasted one. Every vote in my entire life has gone to waste. Slightly less so in Scottish elections, but even then SNP muscled everyone else out then for the most part.

 

It's kinda nice that we're SNP landslide. In a sensible, nice world that means we'd get another referendum and can fuck off out of the shitty old UK.

 

But the world doesn't work that way so we're probably stuck having our NHS dismantled and things just generally ruined

 

Woohoo life

Edited May 8, 2015 by kenshi_ryden

[deanb]

https://twitter.com/BritishReaction/status/596435275129171968

 

No one I ever voted for got in power either. Guess I'm too fond of the underdog/not voting labour in solid labour places.

 

To quote a friend: "We now have Tory in power to fuck everyone, just now without the lube of lib dems to ease it".

[SomTervo]

Ha, well said.

 

Well the vast majority of votes are wasted so I guess we're actually the norm regardless of how we voted.

 

I was really close to voting for the 'Cannabis is Safer than Alcohol' party. At least their manifesto is based purely on fact.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

Think it's only Cameron and Natalie Bennett who are still leaders of their parties after all this drama, though she isn't even an MP. Pretty much a bloodbath out there. Going to take a while to settle down even if it seems weren't not going to be having coalition talks this time around.

 

Thinking about first past the post wasting votes, Labour have had our constituency for the last 79 years (now to be 84) so it's hard to imagine what could change that situation and what the point of voting is.

 

edit: As I was posting that, conservatives can now form a majority Government. I'm guessing the fact it's not going to be a coalition will not result in less complaining than last time about the result. Labour wouldn't have beaten them even if they hadn't lost all those Scottish seats to SNP, so all that complaining is going to make little sense.

Edited May 8, 2015 by TheFlyingGerbil

[SomTervo]

I really feel for you in the safe-seat situation. That is terrible times. I used to be in a safe seat for labour – who I supported then, but didn't make it any less shitty knowing it didn't matter who I voted for.

 

FPTP is just disgusting.

 

FYI there's a petition for electoral reform in Westminster which has been getting tens of thousands of signatures a day since it began last week – sign up here:

 

https://www.change.org/p/party-leaders-reform-our-voting-system-to-make-it-fair-and-representative-makeseatsmatchvotes?recruiter=12116900&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_term=des-lg-action_alert-no_msg&fb_ref=Default

 

Edit: Let me know if the link works for you, it's ridiculous

Edited May 8, 2015 by kenshi_ryden

[deanb]

Unlikely to have been a coalition even if they'd not reached majority. Would have been enough to command a minority government. Voting reform was pushed for last time, and didn't happen. Not sure it'll happen this time even if it can be clearly broken down how weirdly it all is:

 

 

Con have 37% of the votes, 50% of the seats. Lab have 30% of the votes, 35% of the seats. SNP have 5% of the votes, 9% of the seats. Lib Dem have 8% of the votes, 1.2% of the seats, n UKIP has 13% of votes with 0.1% of the seats, n greens with 4% of the votes n 0.1% of the seats.

 

We barely scrapped into having a majority government, something is up with FPTP.

[TheMightyEthan]

Con have 37% of the votes, 50% of the seats. Lab have 30% of the votes, 35% of the seats. SNP have 5% of the votes, 9% of the seats. Lib Dem have 8% of the votes, 1.2% of the seats, n UKIP has 13% of votes with 0.1% of the seats, n greens with 4% of the votes n 0.1% of the seats.

And that, my friends, is the problem with first past the post.  Like GOH! said, it is largely to blame for the US's terrible system.