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Brown Toast: Election fun from across the pond...

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by TigerVols, Apr 29, 2010.

  1. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    The BBC feed has a panel discussion by pundits waiting for some results taking place outside their main studio, and it's pretty clear said panel has been having a few pops, or maybe a few dozen. Very entertaining, even though I have no clue what they're talking about.
     
  2. GB-Hack

    GB-Hack Active Member

    The swings in majorities that the Conservatives are seeing in the contituencies that have reported, although not winning them seats in the house, seem to be bigger than those the exit polls showed.

    If they manage to get an overall swing of 8% or higher, they might be able to claim a small majority on their own.

    Here's a swingometer you can play with yourself, to see what the Conservatives would need to do in order to earn the majority of seats in the house and win the election outright.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/8574653.stm
     
  3. GB-Hack

    GB-Hack Active Member

    And there's the first Conservative gain on the night, picking up the seat of Kingswood from Labour.

    The swing here was 9.4 percent, which if replicated around the country would result in an outright victory for the Tories.
     
  4. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Why do people assume swings are uniform? That method would never be applied to U.S. Obama got about 5 percent more of the vote than Kerry, but it sure wasn't uniform.
     
  5. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    Thanks. Never was too clear on who was who. That's what happens when you grow up on a two-party system.

    What I really enjoy is watching the prime minister get grilled in Parliament. That's fun to watch.
     
  6. GB-Hack

    GB-Hack Active Member

    It's a way of trying to see how particular areas, or races, are trending.

    From the early returns it appears the Conservatives are going to do well when they're going against a Labour candidate as their principal opposition, but might have more difficulty unseating a Lib-Dem candidate.

    That would take some of the seats the Lib-Dems currently hold that the Conservatives were targeting out of play, meaning they would need to take more of the Labour seats they targeted in order to get an outright majority.
     
  7. GB-Hack

    GB-Hack Active Member

    This is now getting very interesting.

    The Conservatives aren't quite getting the headway they needed to to turn a majority, so we look like we're headed for a hung parliament.

    And that makes the Lib-Dems, in a way, the party that holds quite a few more cards than they normally would, since they are going to be able to push either Labour or the Tories over the finish line.
     
  8. Herbert Anchovy

    Herbert Anchovy Active Member

    The annoucement ritual is pretty amazing theater. They line up all the candidates and announce the results one by one, on live TV, with cameras zoomed in on their faces to watch them squirm or smile.
     
  9. HackyMcHack

    HackyMcHack Member

    From what I understand, if the Tories can't gain a majority, Labour gets first crack at forming a government since they're already in power. Do the Tories then call for a no-confidence vote as soon as the queen finishes her speech on opening day? Does this become a process of wash, rinse, repeat?

    Combine the election announcements with a Bruce Forsyth sighting and a reference to punters (as in bookies), and it's a fine night indeed. There is a live feed on the BBC Web site. The only thing they're missing is Dan Rather throwing around random Texas references....
     
  10. GB-Hack

    GB-Hack Active Member

    Labour would get the first chance to try and form a coalition, but the Lib-Dems could be hamstrung by the fact that their leader, Nick Clegg, said that the party that won the majority of seats and the overall vote should be the one to push forward.

    He's going to look very bad if he backs off that at this point and forms a pact with the more ideologically similar Labour Party. The one thing he may be able to force, though, is to tell Gordon Brown that he will work with his party, but only if there is a new leader.
     
  11. deskslave

    deskslave Active Member

    There's the fact that the Tories, so far, have by far the most votes, but Labour and the Lib Dems together have far more than the Tories do. The question, as ever, is whether a party can claim a mandate with some 36-38 percent of the vote. Usually, the answer is yes.

    There's not much doubt that Brown's head will be the price of Lib Dem support (and that large swaths of Labour will not be sad to see the back of him), but there's also the fact that when push comes to shove, the Lib Dems will not want to be seen as a party that allowed the Tories to take power when they could have done something. But the Lib Dems didn't do nearly as well as they'd hoped, which hurts their chances of being a strong voice.

    For whoever asked about the Lib Dems, britwrit was right. They're a weird little party. Despite the name, they occupy some bizarre center ground between Labour and the Tories. They tend to be economically liberal and socially libertarian. They're the only ones who have really talked seriously about rolling back some of the recent blows to civil liberties, for example. I have to imagine the Tories are secretly thrilled Labour pushed all that stuff through, so they don't get blamed for something they likely don't oppose anyway. The Lib Dems run a ton of local councils; they just never make much headway in national elections. They tend to finish second a lot -- which is why they're so in favor of proportional representation and alternative voting.

    In theory, the decision on who to tell to form a government is the Queen's and the Queen's only. But no one wants to politicize her role, so they'll work something out before anyone goes hand-kissing. How long that takes is anyone's guess.
     
  12. deskslave

    deskslave Active Member

    Oh, and Baron, one more thing: One of the reasons that Labour is in so much trouble now is that despite being a left-wing party with trade union and socialist roots, it was extremely tight with George W. Bush. That was, uh, not always popular.
     
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