Alastair Darling maybe - might be an appropriate leader in these times (I assume he won his seat last night?) He’s not indicated any PM / party leadership ambitions thus far though - maybe that makes him the perfect man for the job.
Looks like Clegg’s leaning towards a Con-Lib pact, though.
Yeah, it also had a 67% turnout. Is there a constituency with a higher turn out this year?
I managed to turn out despite being in Moscow at the time (by proxy) 
Yes, I noticed several on 70% or more through the night.
Con-Lib pact, with electoral reform high on the agenda, do you reckon? Looks likely to me. To be followed by a new election as soon as they can rationally get away with it…
the Cons or Lab may offer a referendum on the subject to get the Lib Dems onboard. It remains to be seen whethe rthe populace wants PR though.
I have serious doubts regarding how MPs are selected under PR which I would need addressing before I could vote for PR. In the current system if an MP is a corrupt sh*tbag, and is in your constituency, you vcote him out. How would this work with PR? Wouldn’t high ups in a party be guaranteed first dibs of seats no matter how objectionable they may be?
and just in on the BBC
BREAKING NEWSLib Dem leader Nick Clegg says he sticks to his view that the party with most votes and seats - the Conservatives - should seek to form a government
The uncharitable view would be that he is trying to get Gordon to offer more plums to go into coalition, but after making a statement like that I don’t see how he could turn about and jump into bed with Labour.
Would be difficult. Though it wouldn’t be impossible - bigger insults have been forgiven in the name of power, after all… (The whole national interest thing allows a lot of wiggle room, IMO.)
The way the results have turned out, parliment couldn’t be much more hung. Lab + Lib-Dem just short of a majority, as are Con + DUP. Con + Lib-Dem is the only clear majority, but that seems unlikely as they are quite far apart politically, and crucially the tories are opposed to electoral reform.
My best guess is that Lab + Lib-Dem will try to form a minority government, and will rely on the smaller parties to not bring them down in a confidence vote. I expect there will be another election in a year or two.
The Lib-Dems must be very disappointed. A few more seats and they’d be in a very strong position.
I’m guessing that rather than a pure PR system we’d get a single transferrable vote/instant run-off vote system, similar to the current voting system for Mayor of London. It would keep some local control in the mix without relying on the current FPTP system.
Hmm. Clegg might be hoping to force the Tories into a minority government which will struggle, necessitating a new election in a period of time long enough to allow the voters to remember why they hate the Tories but short enough for them to remember why they hate Labour. That sort of clever political brinksmanship seems a bit beyond their usual level of strategic thinking however, so I suspect they’re just being coy or petulant, figuring that the Conservatives will come knocking when they really need the help which will put the LibDems in a better bargaining position.
Well I wasn’t there but all of my information has been coming from the live BBC stream. They’ve done several segments about voters turned away, they said at several points that some had been waiting for hours. Clegg himself dedicated a portion of his speech to this perceived injustice. Also a whole lot of Brits on twitter seem to feel that poor planning in fact denied many the opportunity to vote.
It really wouldn’t surprise me if it’s all a misconception fueled by a sensationalistic media, but your beef may be with them. Which is weird considering how everyone is constantly telling me about how wonderful and accurate BBC is and how it puts my American media to shame:)
Sadly mine was a wasted vote, David Tredinnick (Con) held his seat.
Joint 1st in 2nd home expenses and was part of the cash for questions scandle but managed to get away with it.
The only cause he seems to care about is homeopathy (see his questions here).
Only four years until the next chance to get rid of him.
I don’t see that the Lib Dems are that far from the Tories. In fact I see quite a bit of overlap with the “nicer” wing of the Conservative Party, the main sticking point being the Euro, but joining that is well off the agenda for the foreseeable future, anyway.
None of the major parties got what they wanted this time. A new election looms, in six to eighteen months.
This really isn’t necessary. :dubious: Curtis may be a rather naive and sheltered young American but that’s a spiteful overreaction to his expression of support for our currently most popular party.
And the prospects of that system changing have grown considerably dimmer these last dozen hours. 
Yep. As explained earlier, Mr. Harris was one of the few MPs firmly on the side of rationality and scientific literacy. Parliament is dumberer for his having left. And look at the numbers! 176 fucking votes difference. FUCK. :mad:
The good news of this election for me personally: both my and my swappee’s tactical votes worked! Sure I’d have preferred a LibDem MP here in Hammersmith but that just wasn’t going to happen. In truth, the Con guy, Shaun Bailey, didn’t seem all that bad a bloke, but I couldn’t vote for his party, hell I couldn’t even understand why he was running under them. And as for the Labour candidate whom I cautiously helped shoo in this time, he’s actually got a decent rational record, so I’m happy with my decision.
To nitpick your use of ‘held on’… actually we’re a new boundary. They chopped off the lower third or so of the old ‘Hammersmith and Fulham’, left us as ‘Hammersmith’, and combined the other bit with another bit chopped off the old ‘Kensington and Chelsea’ to make ‘Fulham and Chelsea’. The Conservative Greg Hands won our constituency in 2005, so technically Labour won it from them.
However Labour would have had our ‘notional’ seat back in 2005 so I guess that’s a kind of ‘hold’.
Meanwhile, Greg Hands went on to win Fulham and Chelsea last night.
This is his ‘rationality record’. Phew, Hammersmith dodged a bullet there. Thanks, Boundary Commission.
Agreed. They’re too flaky for me, but I want to see a little representation from smaller parties (heck, I’m supporting PR reform, aren’t I?). This should give the greens confidence to step up their campaigns, and voters confidence to vote for them. In fact, and I know I’ll get flamed for this, perhaps rightly, but I’d even be happy to see the B-fucking-N-cunting-P win one seat, just to provide a more heterogeneous mixture in Parliament. Of course, I wouldn’t want them to win more than one, and I’d prefer they didn’t keep it for more than one round.
One thing that’s always bugged me about the Speaker’s seat. Do the voters there just not give a shit that they have no representation, or what? And what about Sinn Fein? Is refusing to figuratively munch the Queen’s carpet* really so fucking important that they’ll forgo having a voice in how they are governed?
Reason 1 is indeed a curious, self-referential reason, but in an FPTP system it’s not as idiotic as you may think. For reason 2. As I’ve said above, I am one such voter, LibDem supporter who ticked Labour here. I’ve explained my reasons. Nor, in this instance, am I even minutely responsible for the Lib’s low showing this time, since I only swapped my vote, I didn’t unilaterally change it. (Well unless my ‘partner’ lied, of course, but the beauty of vote-swapping is that deception is counterproductive)
But yeah, bring on PR and I’ll start slobbering over Nick Clegg’s cock* again.
*I’m not sorry. I’d say both of these again. What, you think I care about your mental health?
Oh you poor bastard. My condolences. Well I don’t wish rabies on Mr. Tredinnick, but if he DID happen to get bitten, I hope he would go straight to his homeopathic remedies for prophylaxis.
The tories will not concede meaningful reform as PR would mean a permanent progressive majority govt. Lib and Labour (even with labour at the nadir) have 55% of the popular vote.
They might promise a referendum but would campaign against it.
Tories and Lib-dems are not natural allies.
Such a coalition would not last and if entered into the tories would naturally look for the chance to call another election.
But I can see a tory-Lib coalition being the next govt. (and a second election Nov-Feb). The tories did win the most seats and labour have been rejected so fair enough.
But I’d prefer a progressive coalition of the lib-dems, labour, and the non-unionist nationalist parties and the Green if Brown can pt it together. With clegg as PM.
As you have been told -the Conservative Party would be on the extreme left of the Democrats in the USA.
People keep saying this, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t be like in Germany, with alternating centre-left, centre-right coalitions. Great for the middle party - the FDP in Germany is almost always in government despite only getting I think something like 15% of the vote.
I think what would happen under PR is that some of the “right” of the Tory party would defect to a UKIP which would now get a few MPS, and the remaining Tory party would be capable of forming working coalitions with the Lib Dems.