59 seats left, Tories are still short by 42.
They haven’t even started counting where Galloway is running yet.
So how does it work when it comes to a confidence vote and the like? Does the government need a majority of the MP’s actually in parliament or does it still need 326.
It looks like the only stable government would be a Tory/LDP coalition but this is looking the least likely outcome as well. The Tories probably have the most to lose from electoral reform which could make it impossible for them to ever win an outright majority. The smaller parties tend to lean left so the Tories would struggle to form coalitions as well.
Why do you think that? Labour needs fewer votes per seat than the Conservatives, based on the results so far.
Some very very very stupid US Pundit wrote that Cameron might try to make a deal with Irish Nationalists.
The Tories have adapted to the modern world, but THAT is a stretch too far. No way will the former Conservative and Unionist party join hands nationalists. There are still some Tories who want to resetup the Castle Administration.
It needs a majority of the MPs present for the vote - but on confidence votes, they are almost all there, unless they’re actually dying.
I’m personally gutted about the Lib Dem result - I genuinely thought this time, they were going to do really well. I mean, I know every time they get more people saying they support the Lib Dems than actually vote for them, but this seems to be a spectacularly large gap between talk and reality. And I agree that it’s a huge shame about Evan Harris.
On the other hand, if it’s a properly hung Parliament, it might yet change the way politics is done, if they have to actually negotiate on Bills, rather than forcing through things like anti-terrorism legislation and the DE Act on a 3-line whip. It will be interesting to see what happens over the weekend.
Yes but under the current system the Tories can generally win an outright majority with around 40% of the vote which they can realistically expect to achieve in the future. Under a PR system they could get around 35-40% of the seats but would almost certainly never win an outright majority. Then the problem is that they are ideologically further away from most of the other parties so the most likely coalitions would be center-left ones dominated by Labour and the Lib Dems.
Except for Sinn Fein who if I understand correctly refuse to swear the oath of allegiance and sit in parliament. Then there is that seat with the dead candidate that BG mentioned. So presumably the government will need a few less than 326 in practice. If the Tories do a bit better than current projections they could come very close to that number with the help of the DUP.
Does anyone know what the SNP and Plaid Cymru would demand in exchange for support? Would it be anything that a British government could agree to?
My overall sense is that whichever party leads the government isn’t going to be very successful. It will have to deal with a bad economy as well as political uncertainty and the chances are there will be a quick election anyway by which time they might well lose popularity. So standing back may be the best option though of course giving up power is hard to do.
I’m an American who’s been glued to BBC all night. This has been seriously epic, and a compelling cliffhanger as well!
Congrats to BritDopers on such a high turnout, I certainly hope you guys get an effective government out of the ashes of a virtual stalemate and you can work out those unfortunate incidents of masses of voters being turned away.
I’m finding this to be an interesting look at what to expect from here, for us foreign observers who aren’t exactly sure exactly what a hung parliament actually means.
http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/content/131/hung-parliaments-what-you-need-to-know
You may well be right. Labour have been amazingly resilient, really - it’s striking how weak the Tories are compared to their glory days. Limping in as a minority government, having received full media backing, against the most personally unpopular PM for a generation. Not a convincing mandate for leadership.
If Labour manage to work out a way of getting Gordon to fuck off then they would swan any quick election that gets called.
Woah! Let’s not let this get out of hand, the polls shut at 10pm. There’s a tiny bit of discretion about closing the gates or closing the door (obviously this is dependent on the building being used) and letting people within the boundary at 10pm finish up. All the moaning I’ve seen so far is a bunch of people who turned up around closing time and didn’t get in because they were too late - it’s not as if the polling station hadn’t been open for the previous 15 hours.
If you have first hand evidence of anything else, contact http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/ they’ll be enormously interested. They have to investigate absolutely everything.
The Conservatives have just one MP in Scotland. As the BBC commentator has just pointed out, if the Conservatives do form a government, then they will find it very hard to push through any legislation that has an adverse affect on Scotland.
Gordon has the easiest possible way out if he needs it - he’s going blind in his one remaining eye, he’s got two young kids, one of the kids has cystic fibrosis. The way that his wife was looking at him when he was giving his speech at home, and the massive vote his home constituency gave him…
Looking at the opinion polls, they were pretty accurate when it comes to Tory and Labour votes but seriously overestimated LibDem votes which were around 5% less than predicted. It will be interesting to read the post-mortems on why this happened but it must be terribly disappointing for LibDems whose hopes would have been raised before being cruelly dashed. Of course if the party could haggle some kind of electoral reform deal with Labour it could yet be a historic breakthrough for the party.
Yeah, the Labour leadership is sure to turn on Gordon now the election’s over. Who’s the more likely leader: Milliband, Johnson, or somebody else?
I’m pretty devastated about the Liberal Democrats doing so badly, but I don’t think it’s a huge surprise. I had to persuade my girlfriend (Liberal Democrat supporter) to vote as opposed to going for a drink with a friend. The young vote is pretty fickle.
It’s the standard LibDem effect. Although people may support the LibDems, they:
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are reluctant to vote for a party which they think won’t win (yes, that makes no sense); and
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are afraid that if they vote LibDem it will “dilute” the vote and the party that they REALLY don’t like (usually the Tories) will get in.
A PR system would correct this, although I doubt you’d see them getting a majority regardless.
[Blackadder]
McAngus: Hey, I hope life doesn’t become dull for you not being able to pass laws over Scotland.
Prince Edmund: [under his breath] I wouldn’t pass water over Scotland.
[/BlackAdder]
It’ll be the person picked by the (by miles) best politician in Britain. That’s Peter Mandelson, obviously. I hesitate to second guess The Dark Lord, but David Milliband if he’s got a chance of PM or a significant role in a coalition, Alan Johnson if a sacrifice is required.
Actually, I’ve been reading reports of people posting on Reddit who queued for hours to vote. They saw others who had also been queuing for ages get turned away. People were phoning up council election hotlines complaining, being told help was coming, but then it never arrived.
Bolton West held Labour by 92 votes. I feel my vote was certainly not wasted this year!
Yes but this time they had a pretty good story to tell: that a hung parliament was likely and that the Lib Dems had a serious chance of gaining power through a coalition government and also changing the electoral system to their long-term advantage. I would have thought this would be a pretty persuasive argument for Lib Dem leaning voters worried about “wasting” their votes. Apparently it didn’t work. I have heard speculation that the Greek/euro problems hurt them as the most pro-European party.
Of course even with the disappointing results the LibDems have much more power today than in their entire history since the 80’s. If they just had those 25-30 extra seats they would have been in an enormously powerful position.