In most of the reports on the UK elections, they’re saying that Labour has about a 60 seat majority. The other numbers given are:
646 seats in House of Commons
324 needed to have a majority
355 seats for Labour and 271 seats to other parties (leaving about 20 TBD)
What do the news reports mean when they say “a 60 seat majority”? I would think it would mean 60 seats more than they need to retain power, but that doesn’t make sense, and I can’t figure out a way of adding these numbers that gets 60; the closest I get is by assuming that Labour loses every seat that hasn’t been finalized yet; taking the difference between Labour and all other parties combined gets 64.
[gross simplification]The Labour party is stronger in cities, where the votes can be gathered and tallied quickly, so they tend to win all the early results. The other parties are stronger in the country areas where it takes time to get in all the ballot boxes.[/gross simplification]
Another reason is that many of the later results are from Northern Ireland where counting does not take place immediately and where the Labour party does not field any candidates.
6 6 6 identifies the main reason, being Northern Ireland, which is an entirely separate battle. That probably accounts for most of the 20 seats. However, last time I checked, Harlow was still in multiple recounts. There’s other seats that generally take a long time to declare - is it St Ives that includes the Scilly Isles? Most other seats that may take a long time are rarely marginal - Shetland, which I don’t think has the quick result of the Western Isles, is a Lib Dem safe seat.
In direct answer to the OP - a ‘parliamentary majority’ is when the governing party has more than half the total MPs, and can therefore theoretically win any vote, assuming all MPs stick to partisan instructions…(Blair’s got plenty of backbenchers with no such intentions, so things could get interesting…)
All right - it was the term “majority of…” that confused me. I would think that “majority of 60 seats” means “you have to lose 60 seats to lose your majority,” which is apparently not how the term is being used. Thanks.
But that is what it means! If every Labour MP voted Yes, and every non-Labour MP voted No, the result would be carried by 60 votes. (Currently Labour have 355 seats, with two still to be declared.)