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

It (sort of) exists:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/election_2010/england/8628230.stm

 

Your link got messed up.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/england/8628230.stm

These guys have been around for years. Usually good for a laugh.

 

I owe you a Tetley's, Greene King or some brand of scrumpy.

 

Labour was apparently unveiling a series of billboards today and the press conference was interrupted by the loud sound of a car wreck of a Labour supporter.

The Labour lieutenant on the scene denied that this was a metaphor for the party's campaign as a whole, but, well...

...moments like these prove to me that God has a sense of humor. (Or is it humour?)

 

About an hour left of polling (we get to vote until 10!), not that I'll know what happened until tomorrow morning. They can release exit polls once the polls close. Those have a mixed record; they were dead on in 2005, but called the election the wrong way in 1992. The safest money is on a hung Parliament, followed closely by a strong Tory minority that will be sufficient to govern. (They don't have to get an absolute majority -- they'll get at least a little help from people like the Northern Irish unionist parties.)

FWIW, I voted for the first time in my life, not that it means much in my safe Tory constituency.

 

Harry Potter supports the Lib Dems. That should have ended all doubt on which party to support.

 

The exit polls show, rather not surprisingly, a hung Parliament with the Conservatives as the largest party, officially 19 seats short of a true majority.

The supposedly insurgent Liberal Democrats actually lose ground in the poll, by three seats.

 

Cameron and Medvedev are two leaders who are getting dangerously close to my age. It's making me feel old.

 

One down, 649 to go. Not necessarily a good early sign for Labour, which wins the seat easily, as expected, but lost 12 percentage points off last time's total.

 

As someone who's not well-versed in British politics, can someone explain the political bent of the parties?

I assume conservative is conservative and liberal is liberal. Is Labour even more liberal, or somewhere's in between? And are the Tories more conservative?

 

Basically, both Labour and the Tories are sticking as close as they can to the center right now. The British center is a lot to the left of the American center (both profess to love the National Health Service, legalized abortion and hate the death penalty.)

We could also debate all night whether they're center right - with a Thatcherite love of the free market and the American military - or the center left.

Labour is still funded for the most part by a coalition of trade unions. Out of power, they usually drift to the far left. In power, as with Harold Wilson and Tony Blair, they head for the mainstream, middle-class vote.

Under Thatcher and her successor, John Major, the Conservatives used to be a lot more traditionally, well, conservative. Election thrashings in 1997, 2001 and 2005 led to the rise of their current leader, moderate David Cameron. Gays, minorities, the underclass, they love 'em now!

The Liberal Democrats don't have much of a coherent ideology because, frankly, they're the lib dems. It never really much mattered. They're for the free market AND for closer integration with the European Union. They were against Iraq and want to distance the UK more from the USA. But they're supposedly really good at organizing on a local level, which is why they can stick around.

 

As for tonight, the process is turning into a shambles.

People being turned away from the polls in a number of constituencies while they were waiting to vote, one consitituency apparently ran out of ballot papers, there have been some serious problems today.

If you want to watch coverage, ATDHE.net has the BBC News feed with its running coverage. Jeremy Paxman's segments are definitely worth watching.