One last political moment

[andrewducker]

Much though I do not want a Conservative Government, I think it's pretty disgusting that the Conservatives could come in with 33% of the vote to Labour's 36%, and get 195 seats to 353 (so far).

It's a ridiculous way to run an election, and if the figures were 1.5% different then Michael Howard would be justified in accusing Labour of stealing the election.

Comments

[0olong.livejournal.com]

True true. Do you reckon the Tories might get up the guts to admit there's something wrong with FPTP now that it's fucked them over so badly?

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That sounds a lot like here, except with the conservatives winning.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

Well, otoh, the Conservatives did NOT gain a bigger share of the popular vote. That's a failure - they should have been able to capitalise more on Labour's many problems.

What I find interesting is that LibDem failed to decapitate the Tories, but made inroads into Labour territory. Will be interesting to seen how they develop their policy now. +11 seats and the major gainer of the election.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Note also that the LibDems, with roughly 70% of the Labour vote, got 25% of the number of seats won by Labour.

We do indeed need a PR system.

[adders.livejournal.com]

Worth bearing in mind that, politically, all the parties over here are liberals in the American sense...

That said, Labour actually have a huge electoral advantage since the last round of boundary changes, which means that the Conservaties need to win a significantly large share of the vote to become government than Labour do.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I know, even the so called (pseudo) liberals running for office in the US are far from liberals by EU standards, this upsets me no end and has come close to convincing me that voting is utterly useless here.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

to Labour's 36%

Also meaning that 64% of the voting public got the government they didn't vote for...

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

No, because they're also known as the stupid party.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

The counter arguement is that having this system elects a government with a majority and therefore the political will to push through their policies.

Since 1918, only once (1931) has a party managed to get more than 50% of the vote. Therefore under a PR system, we would always have a coallition government. Since, in effect, we have only 3 main parties in the UK, this would effectively mean a very small and ineffective opposition to whatever coallition is formed.

[kelly-lesbo.livejournal.com]

It's far worse than that because of the low voter turnout, it's less than a quarter of those registered to vote and less than a fifth of the British population.

I notice the tories were ripping the piss out of the liberals, who actually got a much bigger increase in the vote than they did. Also they held many seats in traditional tory areas AND they were the challenging party in most seats. With only an increase of 5% of the popular vote on average the Liberal Democrats would win between an extra 100 and 150 seats.

Anyway it's all over now, go back to sleep Britain, you're government is in control again. The oil, military and biotech corporations are pulling the strings so you don't have to think. Go back to sleep o' proud sheeple of Britain.

[kelly-lesbo.livejournal.com]

Yeah cos politicians working together and having to justify their policies in order get them approved is the wrong way to go.

Far better to have a virtual dictatorship so things get done more efficiently.

*baaaaaaaah*

[andrewducker]

On the plus side, 60-odd percent voted for a somewhat left-ist party, o they did get something close to what they wanted.

[0olong.livejournal.com]

Of course, looking at these figures again, it breaks down to the Tories getting 30.7% of the seats, for 32.4% of the votes, which is pretty close - the Tories don't really have much to complain about. In contrast, Labour got 55.3% of seats for 35.3% of the votes, while the Lib Dems got only 9.6% for 22.1% of the votes - and of course would have got a far higher proportion of the votes if we didn't have FPTP.

Lordy, how we need a new system.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

I'm from New Zealand. No sheeples here. ;-)

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Which is why the Tories will never support PR.