Conservative: 10,706,647
Labour: 8,604,358
Liberal Democrats: 6,827,938
EDIT: Damn you!!
Obviously the BBC has a left wing bias…
You’ve got to be quicker than that! 
So, how many potential voters was there? I thought I’d read 40 million, somewhere.
Party Seats Votes
Conservative 306 10,706,647
Labour 258 8,604,358
Liberal Democrat 57 6,827,938
UKIP 0 917,832
BNP 0 563,743
SNP 6 491,386
Green 1 285,616
Sinn Féin 5 171,942
Democratic Unionist 8 168,216
Plaid Cymru 3 165,394
SDLP 3 110,970
On preview I see I should have gone for speed rather than pretty formatting.
I like your pretty formatting. And you told me how many BNP assholes there are registered in my country.
Based on 29.6 million votes and a 65% turnout I make it a potential voter pool of 45.5 million.
Can’t we name and shame those who didn’t fulfil their obligation?
I didn’t vote, though not because I didn’t want to. The queue at my polling station was so long that it closed before I was allowed to cast my ballot. I live in a ‘safe seat’, but it was still galling, not being able to affect the popular vote.
If you had mandatory voting, it would just result in a ‘none of the above’ party. Besides most ‘political apathy’ isn’t caused by people being apathetic about politics, rather disillusionment with the available parties and the current voting system.
You obviously didn’t see the BNP party election broadcast with the turban-wearing Asian doctor bigging them up.
Thanks for the tutorial on Cabinet government, Captain Amazing and Polycarp. Of course that contrasts quite a bit with the role of the U.S. Cabinet, as BrainGlutton noted. An apocryphal story from the Civil War era has President Lincoln polling his Cabinet as to a policy he wanted to pursue. Summing up their views, he said with a smile, “The vote is six nays and one aye. The ayes have it.”
The current Brown Cabinet of 22: Brown ministry - Wikipedia
The Obama Cabinet also, coincidentally enough, now has 22 members: Cabinet of Barack Obama - Wikipedia
Churchill’s first War Cabinet, by contrast, had just 5 members: War cabinet - Wikipedia
Although, as your article notes, the War cabinet is just a specially convened sub-Cabinet, not the Cabinet of the whole government.
And Churchill led a coalition government from 1940 to 1945.
I did vote and as it turns out it was a wasted vote, not only did I vote against my incumbent Tory candidate (who won anyway), the people I voted for (Lib Dems) are now trying to form a government with these people.
Until we get some form of PR or other reform to our system I will not be voting again, there seems little point. In the area I live nothing can overturn the Tory majority, even having a candidate with a record of cash for questions, poor voting record and high expenses claims doesn’t deter the rich from voting for him.
Don’t forget that many people choose who to vote for for all sorts of not necessarily good reasons.
[ul]
[li]Because they always have voted for party X. Always have, always will. Actual policies don’t count, either at all, or much.[/li][li]They like either the candidate or the leader. Nothing to do with policies. “I like that nice Mr Clegg/Cameron/Brown.” (Oh, alright, probably not Gordon Brown.)[/li][li]They have a perception of what the party stands for, which may not necessarily actually reflect the party’s policies.[/li][li]They know that a party (say, Lib Dems) won’t get in, so they think they might as well vote Tory or Labour.[/li][li]They’re ‘persuaded’ to vote for a party based on popular opinion, what their friends say, what they’ve read in the paper of their choice etc.[/li][/ul]
I am pretty certain that relatively few people have actually studied - and understood - the party’s manifesto.
Arguably everybody’s vote, in isolation, was wasted - no constituency was decided by one vote, so no individual made any difference. Of course, if everyone took that view, the system would collapse.
True PR makes your vote much more likely to count. With 650 seats and 30 million votes, you have a one in 46,154 chance of casting the vote that gets your favored party another seat.
I didn’t vote - I am not sure if I can (no UK address, lived overseas for years). I have not explored whether I can get a postal vote - more trouble than it is worth - see paragraph 1.
No vote is wasted. My constituency would normally be called a safe Labour seat, but it was in fact, a terrifically tight 3-way battle, which Labour just won.
If we get some form of PR then get used to them jumping into bed with ‘someone’ because you’ll almost certainly never see anything else again.
Are you in Hampstead & Kilburn, perchance? Glenda Jackson (whom, I must confess, I thought had retired) won her seat with a majority of a mere 42; the Liberal Democrats in third place were only 799 votes behind the second-place Conservatives. That’s a pretty close race all around. A friend of the LibDem candidate reports that the Tories and LibDems campaigned vigorously there while Jackson…didn’t. I hope she’s had a wakeup call.
Wait… Glenda Jackson, the actress?
Yup.
She’s been an MP since 1992. She’s very Old Labour.