UK General Election - Hung Parliament
Gordon Brown, Labour; Nick Clegg, Liberal; David Cameron, Conservative
Seats and percentage of vote
Majority required: 326
- Conservative and Unionist Party: 306; 36.1%
- Labour: 258; 29%
- Liberal Democrats: 57; 23%
- Democratic Unionist Party: 8; 0.6%
- Scottish National Party: 6; 1.7%
- Sinn Fein: 5; 0.6%
- Plaid Cymru: 3; 0.6%
- Social Democratic & Labour Party: 3; 0.4%
- Green: 1; 1%
- Alliance Party: 1; 0.1%
- UK Independence Party: 0; 3.1%
- British National Party: 0; 1.9%
For all you jolly non-Brits, I'll set out some context as I go. We had our general election yesterday. The result that came back today was not decisive: we have a hung parliament, where no party commands an overall majority in the House of Commons. Vote-wise, the Conservative and Unionist Party (or Tory Party), lead by David Cameron, has come out on top, but is just under the majority. The incumbent Labour Party, with its rather unpopular PM Gordon Brown, took a heavy beating (several current and former secretaries of state have lost their seats) but still held on to enough seats to come in second. The Liberal Democrats, who have been out of government since David Lloyd George in the 1920s, failed to capitalise on an increase in support for leader Nick Clegg, to come in third, with far less support than predicted.
While such occurances are commonplace in other European countries, to have a hung parliament in a Westminister system is rare, the last one was thirty years ago. We don't generally do coalitions, the primary breaks from this rule being the wartime governments. Currently, both Tory and Labour are hoping to gain the Liberals for support, possibly even in coalition, though even then Labour still wouldn't have enough seats to command a majority. The Tory best bet is to win the Liberals and the Democratic Unionist Party, one of the sympathetic Irish unionist parties.
In other news, the Green Party (environmentalists) took their first seat, as did the Alliance Party (secular Irish party). Otherwise, the regional parties such as the Scottish Nationalist Party, Sinn Fein (Irish republicans) and Plaid Cymru (Welsh nationalists) haven't lost or gained anything. The UK Independence Party (anti-European Union, whose leading MEP was involved in a plane crash yesterday) and the British National Party (fascists, though they'll deny it) haven't gained any seats.
And while this is going on, our economy is apparently rapidly going downhill again as a result of the instability.
Honestly, I'm rather hoping for a Tory/Liberal/DUP coalition, which would help prevent the stupid aspects of both parties asserting themselves in a government. I'd have preferred a situation where the Liberals had been able to displace the Labour party and take over as the shadow cabinet, putting Labour back to a third party - as Labour did to the Liberals in the 1920s - but alas the Liberals weren't able to do that. Having some Irish in a coalition would be nice simply because I love the Irish. Easily the best of the Celtic races.
Any thoughts from fellow UK voters, or observations from the many non-Brits in the world? Anyone else think that the BBC should let David Dimbleby finally go to sleep after 16 hours on live TV?
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Comments
A Tory/Lib Dem coalition would be far to unstable to get past any major issues in the House after the initial showboating of issues that Cameron brought up that they could agree on. I see another election following this one very shortly as coalition governments historically in Britain are very unstable.
Any day of the week i'd take a strong government that can implement its policies over a coalition where we may see that very little will get done with the Lib Dems and Labour voting a lot of issues down. Maybe the changes the Tories introduce will be horrid, but we have enough resoures to boot them out if that's the case, i'd really hate to see a government that can do nothing for the people it's supposed to serve.
Also, trust me, you don't want any Northern Irish MP's in a coalition. All our MP's from the major parties are malingers of the highest order and haven't done much actual work instead finding pretense after pretense for an excuse not to work together. Sinn Fein MP's won't even sit in the House of Commons as it's recognising British rule, though gladly take their pay packet from Westminster. Unionist MP's a lot of the time are horribly out of touch with the social situation in Northern Ireland and show staunch right-wing almost Bible Belt-esque policies (some proposed policies on homosexual rights by Unionist MP's have been appaling) others are Independents and smaller party members (SDLP, UUP) that really just don't have any leverage to get anything done
Personally though I really don't want to see more of Brown, from the second he went in it just reminded me of John major desperately trying to hold on the 90's with not much faith left in his party. Like the Conservatives back then, Labour is stale and tired and I think the country really just needs some new blood at the helm. At the end of the day that's not even a whole pile between the aprites in terms of policy compared to what their was say 20 years ago when Labour was a Socialist party (until Tony Blair ripped clause 4 out to make his party more presentable to big business and those more centre inclined.)
For the Americans out there, Gordon brown's the old guy and David Cameron's the younger guy with the really shiny face
I'm sure you could pull it off this time though, if your politicians all hold hands and promise to be nice!
Incidentally, how did the Monster Raving Loony Party do this election?
No seats thank god.
Look at this guy
He made me rage at my telly when I saw him. Fist guy was far better
I can't stand Cameron (and surprisingly, neither did several of the Conservative candidates I've spoken with in this election. The reoccuring theme I got was "He's nice to speak to in person, but you come away, and later think 'Wait, what?' as you realise you've been duped by a spinmaster"), but I'm willing to put up with him if we get some of the betters amongst the Conservatives into cabinet. William Hague, Kenneth Clarke, etc, are decent (as decent as frontline politicians can get) people, who will help keep a grip on the slimely Cameron slug with some rubber gloves.
A Liberal coalition with the Tories will also help restrain Cameron. Such a coalition would help stop the Tories acting stupidly (like giving tax breaks to the rich), and likewise prevent the Liberals doing anything idiotic. Plus, the chance of getting Vince Cable into the Chancery would be great - especially as it would be at the expense of clone-a-toff-bastard George Osbourne. Cameron in my mind is unfortunately best of three complete morons, I have absolutely no love for Brown (Labour has just run itself into the ground, at this point it just needs to go and watch the cricket like Major did in 1997), and I remain entirely unconvinced at Clegg's "We're new! (actually, we're 400 years old, but you've got collective short memories)" act.
Ok, no Irish then. Unless they're not politicians and don't have paramilitary links. I just have a lot of respect for the average Irishman, and thought it might be nice to get someone other than Scots and English into government for a change.
We could barely hold together a coalition government even while the Germans were bombing us into next week, let alone now. While a nice idea in principle, with cross-party consensus, it just won't hold up. There's too much conflict and not enough willpower. As JedExodus said, we'll be back at the polls well before the constitutional 5 years, even if we get a coalition government with LabLib or ToryLib.
For anyone interested, George Galloway, the anti-war government-defying hero of peace to some, the corrupt terrorist-supporting socialist looney to others (very much a love or hate individual) has lost his seat in Parliament after moving to the constituency next door and then losing to Labour.
Anyway, My thoughts on the election: I'm very surprised at how badly the Lib Dems did, given their approval ratings. I guess they couldn't quite get over the "a vote for any party other than labour/conservative is a waste" sentiment, or maybe their problem lies with the fact support for them was widespread and not concentrated. If that was true, despite them having a high national vote percentage, they wouldn't win regionally in different areas, so hence wouldn't gain many seats (which i think they saw coming, hence their bid for electoral reform).
As for a conservational democrat coalition, i just can't see it working. Cameron likely won't budge on much, and their policies are too different to work properly. A liblab coalition is unlikely to do much either, given that they won't have a majority.
I also think it's unfair that Brown is still the PM, despite losing the election!
w000t *hopes so*
Good stuff, George Galloway is one of the most odious little pieces of crap i've ever had the misfortune to meet. After listening to Galloway talk for an hour it was horribly obvious that Mr Galloway is in politics for no other reason than money (and maybe the bullying as he seems to enjoy that) as he detailed to us just how much money he'd won from libel cases, how he was touring the country up and down doing talks, charging people for admission and presenting his radio show. No wonder he has one of the worst Commons attendance figures out there what with him being too busy with all his outside "interests"
...also he threatened to sue a student that time I met him
As the incumbent party, does Labour get to try and form a coalition first? And if they fail, then the Conservatives (as the party that won the most seats) get to try, and if they also fail, the Conservatives rule as a minority government, unless parliament makes a vote of no confidence, in which case a fresh election is called?
There's 8 DUP MP's alone, though from where I look at it the Tories need 20 MP's to get an overall majority. The Unionist/Conservative alliance got "nil points" even with that ghoul Reg Emply as a primo candidate. EDIT: Ahhh you were counting the Unionists. It'll be interesting to see what they'll try and gouge out of the Tories, my guess is bugger all as they'll be too starstruck by the fact they're involved in proper big boys politics
I doubt anything'll happen between now and Monday to be honest, everyone has to consult their party (by everyone I mean Nick Clegg and only Nick Clegg) and get some sleep, these guys have been going through the night and it's not a prime time to make decisions. the Lib Dems meet tomorrow so maybe we'll hear some rumblings from the boardroom and get an idea of the atmosphere in the Liberal party.
Bar the pining for the loss of Lembet Opik
Nah, biggest party gets to try first, well maybe, actually no...unless.... It's all very confusing considering there's never been a hung Parliament before in my lifetime. BBC are good at explaining all this malarky though
Also, You just reminded me that Mister saxon is an anagram of Master No(number) Six.
I just wanted to say I find it weird that although the Lib Dems have lost the election, they still have a lot of power over who our next priminister will be just by joining forces with either the Tories or Labour. It's really odd to know that they have that much power despite losing.
They may have come third overall, but they still had a large percentage of the votes (but unfortunately for the lib dems, it wasn't concentrated in constituancies, it was kind of spread out).
Thats one of the reasons i would like to a national polling system, where 40% of the nations votes corresponds to 40% of the seats in parliament, rather than it being area specific.
Also, has everyone seen the BNP fight? I'm glad to see they didn't win any seats.
The BNP didn't get any seats.
I voted Saxon!
If only, Saxton Hale would get my vote a thousand times over, and then he'd make me eat all my ballot papers as punishment for tainting the democratic process, and i'd cry with glee
As if, Saxton Hale doesn't need to be ELECTED. He'd just stare down the ballots until he wins.
I think that the way politics are dealt with at the moment is deeply flawed. There shouldn't be multiple parties with different opinions, there should be a load of insanely clever people with degrees in ethics and PhDs and thick glasses getting together and having discussions on how it should be done.
The aim of a politician is (or, at least, should be) to find solutions to problems that will fulfil the best interests of the greatest number of people. In my opinion, that's a fairly simple goal which, after a certain amount of deliberation, can be achieved quite well in most cases.
Now, since this is a pretty measurable goal, it seems stupid to me that we go about it like we do.
Let's say a team of scientists want to find the answer to a certain problem and needs a certain amount of funding to solve this problem. Do they A) split up into several little teams, each of which has a different opinion, and tell newspapers to "ignore the other teams, they're full of it. We're pretty sure we've got the right idea, give us the funding. Also, did you know that we're the only team who bother to hang our lab coats up properly when we get in? Just throwing that out there. Think about it. *wink*" or do they
I'm a year away from being old enough to vote, but when I am, I don't think I will. I'm not going to say that people shouldn't have the right to vote, but what I will say is this: possible outcomes/solutions should be made by one team of (very clever, nerdy) people, and then the decision of whether or not to implement these ideas should be put to public vote. If the vote comes back as lower than 50%, then the idea should be scrapped and a new one thought up because it does not fulfil their goal (i.e., "fulfil the best interests of the greatest number of people"). It's that simple. It baffles me to think that something as important as politics is still stuck in this backward way of thinking while almost every other profession/field is on the right track.
I kind of get what you are saying, but the analogy is a little of. Politics is all about trying to get things to work. Think of it as two groups of scientists trying to create a hover car for example. They have completely different ideas as to what will work, and both sides beleive the others method will work. There is only a grant available for one method. An election is essentially the same as both teams of scientists giving presentations as to why their method will work to get the job done, in order to get the grant money to do it. The british electoral system just features many more groups of scientists who all think their theory is the best. To relate it to a theory, think of it like the end of the universe (continual expansion, halt, collapse or bounce)
Ideally, what you say would be nice, but Scientists don't always agree on ideas, until there is a lot of evidence to back it up, and even then there are still skeptics. The same is true with politicians.
As for voting next year, i would advise you to do it. If not for your sake, then for someone elses. If you don't think any parties approach will be beneficial to you, vote for the one that will be beneficial to the most, or for the people you care about (so voting the same as your mother, to help her).
While they're busy killing each other, we'll have anarchy!
But this isn't how it would work. The group of scientists designing the hover car wouldn't split up into different teams, they'd work as one team since that would be the most efficient.
But let's say they did split up into different teams. They would look at all of the arguments and choose which would be the best one, and then the remaining parties would forget about their own ideas because they are now obsolete. They would have humility. They would concede. Why should politicians be exempt from that way of behaving?
If a team of people is to be successful in deciding the best outcome for something, they need three things: knowledge, humility and co-operation. At the moment, politicians have only one of these qualities (knowledge), and their grip on that isn't always as strong as it could be.
Without knowledge, a team doesn't know how to reach their goal. Without humility, they lose site of their goal and get bogged down in trying to best their opponents and prove themselves right, and in doing so, fail to make concessions where necessary. Without co-operation, they don't progress and help each other to better their arguments.
This is true, but no plan is perfect. My picture of an ideal system of government is flawed, but nowhere near as flawed as the current system. A few flaws is better than dozens.
I might vote if I have the time or motivation to read into what everybody has to say. I agree with what you said about voting for what would be beneficial for most, but not about the people I care about (although that sounds harsh; I would rather do something that betters most people than a few people).
The only reason I don't feel an urge to vote is because I'd be choosing not the party with the best policies, but the party with the least flaws, and I know full well that this could be easily resolved if this wasn't such a dick-measuring contest and the politicians co-operated.
We get 2 papers, the Daily Record, and The Scottish Sun. The former is pro-Labour, the latter is pro-Tory. The Sun has so much of a Tory bias infact, that in England they had the following picture on the Front Page on Election day:
I think my brother summed it up nicely when he said "They've tried to make him look like Obama but it just comes across of more like Stalin".
I think there will be another election, because the Torys are probably going to try and go for ruling anyway. If they can't woo the Lib Dems then they'll probably try as a minority government. It doesn't really work however, as the SNP up here can attest to.
That's exactly what I think our House of Lords should be, and exactly what it can't be if it ever gets reformed to be an elected chamber. It needs to have all the partisan party appointee Lords (like Mandelson and Sugar) kicked out, and limited to only the experts, bishops and law lords, picked by royal commission on basis of their merits. Hereditary lords rarely turn up anyway, they shouldn't be allowed to sit, though retain their titles. Then we might get some sort of productiveness out of Lords that its meant to get in giving expert and moral views on legislation. Making it a second elected chamber will rob it of what expert such as Robert Winston (yes, I know he's a labour Lord, but he's a good example of an "insanely clever people with degrees" in the Lords) it has at the moment, making it just as flawed as the Commons.
As for the House of Lords, seeing as the only powers it ultimately has is to delay legislation by a year the whole thing to me is pretty unnecessary and a waste on the publics purse strings, not to mention that Lordships are dished out like candy
But he added that no party had won an overall majority in the UK general election and, as Labour leader, he had to accept that as a judgement on him.
I never really thought about it but yeah that is a very good point. Of course had the country made a clear decision then this wouldn't be happening in the first place so it's not exactly standard practice. Kinda Scotland's fault though since the memories of vicious Tory cuts and tests on us and us alone pretty much steeled Scotland as a Pro Labour stronghold.
Plus The Sun supports the Tories, and although I get their paper I loathe them as much as someone can loathe a trashy tabloid. They're going to have a damn field day with Gordon Brown quitting since they've been labeling him a squatter since Friday. They'll probably try and take credit for it too.
Such a good point that William Hague used it just after 7pm
Don't even start me on The Sun, it makes me sick to my stomach when they find some injured soldier and slap a Sun logo on him and surround him with a few models and run some non-story about how they support "Our boys."
It's exploitative, it's shady, it's deploarable, and by god it sells newspapers
You can't realy blame them for this just cos they didnt vote torrie.
Wikipedia says I can, and I will
Zonino: Location: Scotland
I can and do blame us. I don't mind though, all this drama is actually making politics somewhat interesting.