innocent_lex

Gordon Brown has resigned as PM, and HMQ has invited David Cameron to become PM. He's standing outside No. 10 right now making a speech which sounds pretty good, and I sincerely hope he follows through. So that's it, change of government in the space of an hour: Cameron is now in No. 10 in a new job. Still waiting for the confirmation of a coalition with the LibDems, but that's what Cameron has announced he's planning.

The two 'negotiating teams' are together in the Cabinet Office again today, discussing how the Conservatives and LibDems can work together to govern the country. What surprised me (and by now I really should be beyond this) was the make-up of the two teams. Each have four people, each do not contain the party leader (unsurprising) and each is comprised of white men. Yep, eight white men are discussing making a deal on how to run the country. We've made enormous progress in this country, it seems. Huge. Massive.

*sigh*

I'm not clear on what the exact mechanism of proportional representation is, but here's some simple maths based on the percentage of vote yesterday:

Conservative = 36% = 234 seats
Labour = 29% = 190 seats
LibDem = 23% = 149 seats

Putting that against the latest numbers (Con 291, Lab 251, LibDem 52, Other 27) it shows up the argument really clearly.

My conflict is that traditionally in this country we've had a majority party who is capable of making decisions and being clearly in charge of the country when we look at *seats*. However, it's been a long time since we've had a majority party according to percentage of the vote. While the idea of a hung parliament every time is a scary prospect for this country, when you look at it like this (and look at the last couple of elections where Labour have had huge numbers of seats without being close to a majority of the vote) it just seems like the democratic thing to do. There's always been talk about people being annoyed that their votes "don't count" and in the last election and this one it's been glaringly clear that's so.

So, yes, I guess I'm in favour of changing the system, no matter the likely loss of majority governments (and all the implications therein) for the future. Heck, politicians might even have to act like grown-ups - that would *really* be a change, and one I fully support.

We're getting reports of various issues with the election:
- possible election fraud was mentioned yesterday, which I didn't investigate but am now more interested in, because of...
- various polling stations closed with big queues of people outside still waiting to vote, and
- at least one polling station staying open beyond the 10pm deadline, and
- plenty of people turning up at a polling station without their polling card (as it clearly states on your card is absolutely fine) only to find out they're not listed on the register and have to go away again, and
- at least one polling station is reporting running out of ballot papers before the polls closed with people still wanting to vote there

People are saying there's been a significant increase in the numbers of people voting overall, which can only be good for democracy. However, the above problems could well lead various constituencies open to legal challenges and possibly criminal charges in the event of the fraud. Fraud is not new for us - we've had plenty of it in the past, usually in local elections. But the idea that people were turned away from polling stations is new as far as I know, and everyone being interviewed and reporting on it, as well as those who were actually turned away are appalled.

Re the hung parliament, apparently HMQ may come into the equation at some point because of constitutional law. I'm not completely sure how that works, but it seems that if GB resigns then HMQ would actually actively invite Cameron to form a government even if the conservatives don't have a full majority.

Also, it turns out my local council are on twitter, and they're saying we should have a result here sometime between 3-4am for the MP and local election results in the afternoon.

Seems I'm not asleep yet. This is the most fascinating a UK election has been in years!

I've got BBC News on and they've got the results of their exit poll:
Labour: 255
Conservative: 307
LibDem: 59

I have to confess I'm yet again stunned at the disparity between the number of votes and the number of seats. The latest pre-election opinions polls that I saw were showing the following (approx):
Labour: 27%
Conservative: 36%
LibDem: 26%

The difference between those two sets of numbers is just peculiar, and the discrepancies certainly explain the LibDems' desire to see a proportional representation system (we currently have a 'first past the post' system). This graph from the last election shows what an impact our current system has in bringing in a government that most of the country don't want: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Percentage_graph_UK_POLITICS_2005.png

Whatever the case, nobody is a clear winner according to the exit poll. A party needs 326 MPs to get an absolute majority in parliament. We'll see what the real results are in the morning.

ETA: Paxman to Mandelson (Labour monkey): If you guys try to hang onto Downing Street it's going to look like a coup, isn't it. *snerk*

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Entries tagged with election

Cameron new PM

Hung parliament still dangling in the breeze

Different election frameworks

Election update

Our election system is bewildering again

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April 2013

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