Duke, you don’t work at 10 Downing Street, do you?
And as to Barking… I knew somebody was going to say that. :rolleyes: 
Now that I’ve done the number crunching, I hope I can be allowed some analysis.
The biggest surprise to me about d’Hondt was how many seats the LibDems would actually pick up. I expected them to do well, but nearly 100 seats better? The final tally of 240-198-153 makes it look like a real three-horse race, and it also truly changes the coalition equation. I suggested a Lib-Lab coalition government. But what if the Conservatives made a better deal to the LibDems? Then a Con-Lib coalition would have 399 seats (if we include the six Unionists), and they can tell UKIP to shove it, with the result being a much stronger coalition than the Lib-Labs, and a Conservative party theoretically more aligned with the EU.
The other big surprise about the d’Hondt results is how marginalized the smaller parties would be. Yes, the “others” double their take from 28 to 56. But with the continued dominance of the Big Three there’s no real opportunity for any of them to be a surprise kingmaker. Imagine the Tories had gotten 317 instead of 307 in this election…can’t you imagine the Unionists and nationalists falling over themselves to make up those last 9 seats for a majority? Under d’Hondt, any two of the Big Three make up a fairly fireproof majority.
Thirdly, other than the LibDems, most of the voices calling for proportional representation don’t do much that better under d’Hondt. The Greens only get one more seat in London and come uncomfortably close to losing the one they actually got in South East. Plaid Cymru scrapes one more seat. The Scottish Nationalists double their total, but they’re still nowhere near Salmond’s goal of 20. Meanwhile, the UKIP and the dogshits, er, BNP, who have never been particularly vocal on PR, zoom from 0 to 23 seats.
Lastly, this whole exercise bore out why the Conservatives and Labour alike are rightfully afraid of conceding any space on PR. Between them they lost 126 seats under d’Hondt, while the LibDems went up 96 seats.
I wish! I wish!
And thanks to you and Celyn for the kind words. I’m writing this off as “hands-on exercise in Excel 2010”.
Of course you have our permission to. Thanks for both the number-crunching and the analysis, which seems sound to me, at least.
I hate to nitpick your excellent contributions to this thread, but Labour would actually be slightly bigger losers, proportionately. By your numbers, under d’Hondt they would have won only 76.7% as many seats as they actually did, while the Tories would have won 78.4%.
That’s true, I suppose.
But looking at it another way, the Tories don’t make out so well under d’Hondt compared to Labour. Overall they received 36.1% of the votes, and they get 36.9% of the seats. Yet Labour received 29.0% of the votes, but they get 30.5% of the seats. In other words, the Tories get 0.8% more seats than votes, but Labour gets 1.5% more seats than votes; a small difference, but potentially important in a close election.
I should also mention that I didn’t put a “floor” on proportional rep; that is to say, I didn’t have a minimum vote percentage which a party must receive in a region to get a seat. Let’s say we made the floor at 2.5% (the regions I chose are a bit too large to go with the usual 5.0%). Right off the bat the Greens lose their two seats, and looking through the results we can take away two BNP seats in North West and Eastern. These four seats are replaced as follows: LibDem 3, Conservatives 1.
I know, I agree it’s daft. But I guess the premise is, despite what foreigners might think, we’re citizens not ‘subjects’, so don’t swear allegiance to the crown if we don’t want to. It makes sense to have a swearing in Parliament as it’s really about swearing to the country (of which the Queen is merely the embodiment). If voters have a problem with Sinn fein’'s stance, then hey, don’t vote for them!
I don’t think it’s that daft, and I am no particular Sinn Fein sympathiser. Their main raison d’etre is of course that Northern Ireland should be part of Ireland, not the UK. Their voters know that and support that. It would therefore be strange for them to declare loyalty to Britain.
And Northern Ireland is a special case, politically separate from the rest of the UK. Voters there are already accustomed to the idea that their MPs have little influence in Westminster. Even now, with the big parties desperately looking around for other parties with which to form coalitions, it is difficult to include the NI parties, because any British government would want to be seen to be neutral when dealing with Northern Ireland issues. That is going to be difficult if you are part of a coalition including Sinn Fein or the DUP or whoever.
The Shinners can not turn up and still get their salary and expenses because it fobs them off and stops them thinking so much about murder and things like that 
I’m not sure what sort of a disservice Gerry Adams can really do to his constituents to be honest. I guess allegedly having green lighted the knee capping of his child molesting brother put him in a better light than his Unionist counterpart who just sold his garden for a bit of a profit.
You realise, of course, that STV is effectively a form of PR that avoids party lists? Perhaps you mean IRV, the limiting case of STV where there’s only one seat per constituency.
IMO your perception of the Lib Dems as a single-issue PR party is way off, as well; they contain a significant classical liberal wing that is entirely without representation in either of the main parties, and would (I hope) gain traction in a system that was not inherently bistable.
This is absolutely not true, particularly with respect to the Tories and the Unionist parties, but also any of the big three and any of the NI parties other than Sinn Fein.
I agree, Quartz - I’m very sure I recall a time when a Tory government was getting by only with the help of this or that N. Ireland party. I think Ian Paisley’s lot but I’m not 100% awake.
1951? The Conservatives had a 16 seat majority due to support by the Ulster Unionists and the National Liberals.
I don’t remember any Tory minority government being sustained by the DUP or any other weirdo party. However, I am also not 100% awake.
Well, I think it is essentially true. I guess that you are referring to the electoral alliance between the Conservative party and the Ulster Unionists, in which they pooled some of their promotional efforts. But I don’t think a Westminster government would consider itself to be in a true majority if it relied on the support of Northern Ireland parties. Northern Ireland politics is, let’s face it, separate from the rest of British politics. No mainland parties have a presence there.
The Tories and the UUP, yes, not that it matters now, but not the DUP, surely not?
There’s moonbats in that party that would frighten even Colonel Hatesblacks-Wickitt, the seventh Baron of Cuntshire, retd.
Labour have some traction with the SDLP I think. Pushkin?
I don’t understand why Sinn Fein don’t go to Westminster. Better to be pissing a tent up a rope or something. The allegiance to the Queen thing is just a bit of ceremony, means fuck all. Tommy Sheridan got inducted to the Scottish Parliament, by the actual Queen, while simultaneously trying to cross his fingers and give a worker-power salute. It all went off without too much mutual embarrassment.
Anyway, the Queen is used to all that stuff, she should invite Gerry and Martin round for tea, and if they were half-way decent politicians they’d accept. I can think of a couple of really awkward conversational topics to avoid, but hey.
John Major was seen to have relied upon the support of the UUP in the 90s, back when it was the fourth largest party by seats in Westminister. The 90s was a time when peace in NI was still somewhat uncertain.
There was mention of a Labour party having done something similar back in the 70s, but I can’t remember where exactly I read that.
The Tories and Labour refrained from trying to directly campaign there, seeing themselves represented in a small way by the UUP and SDLP respectively.
The business of the devolved Assembly in Stormont is quite local of course, but the DUP at least was touting itself as large enough to perhaps hold some sway in a hung parliament.
Have the SDLP ever allied electorally with the Labour Party?
Labour had a few seats in Stormont back when NI had its own Parliament…4 whole seats in 1958 and 1962. Then the Troubles started, and the Catholics all split off to the SDLP and Protestants to the DUP.
I think IIRC that that Labour Party was a separate entity to the Labour Party in Britain though.
I remember him having a slim majority at times, but I honestly don’t remember him relying on the UUP.