The UK political thread (formerly independence thread)

[keera_envenomed]

Wiping the smug smile off Farage's face is almost worth the broken electoral system.

[Danroush]

*Almost*

5 Million votes ending up as 2 seats is pretty darn ridiculous.

Also note that Labour have gained half a million votes since 2010 but lost 25 or so seats...

[Matty_the_Emo_Slayer]

The system seems so heavily weighed in the Tories favour, since Attlee we've had...2(?) elected Labour Prime Ministers?

Yep just two, but Wilson led them to election victory twice (i.e. first won in '64, lost to the Heath-led Tories in 1970 and beat them again in '74)

[CrappyMike]

So after all that fuss, nothing really changes unless you're a jock. And nobody gives a toss about that mob anyway. So perhaps now we can focus on the important news story of the day ie. the VE day commemoration.

Nothing will change for us either. For all the snp have claimed they aim to provide a voice for Scotland in Westminster, all they want is another referendum and more power for themselves. I doubt any of them or at least not many of them will ever be seen in westminster

[WorMzy]

Hopefully now that the result is known, the political bullshit that's swamped every news site for the past two months can fuck off and we can have some real news again.

[Metalchemyst]

UKIP up 9.5% on last time so they have reason for optimism. Although once the EU membership issue is settled their balloon might deflate.

This election shows both why we need a different voting system...and also why we won't get another voting system gah

Would a change to PR not be in Labour's interest now?

[Jobdone]

Hopefully now that the result is known, the political bullshit that's swamped every news site for the past two months can fuck off and we can have some real news again.

Oh man I know right. The future of the country? I just wanna know about how that bird off the only way is essex has changed her vagina.

[WorMzy]

Aye, at least that'd be interesting to read than Clegg's red lines and Farage's trip to the pub, and breaking news -- one candidate said a rude word at someone.

Election's done, baby's popped, let's move on to something interesting.

[keera_envenomed]

UKIP up 9.5% on last time so they have reason for optimism. Although once the EU membership issue is settled their balloon might deflate.

This election shows both why we need a different voting system...and also why we won't get another voting system gah

Would a change to PR not be in Labour's interest now?

PR would just weaken Labour further. A more representative system would take away the voters who feel that Labour were the only alternative to the Tories even if they didn't necessarily agree with their policies.

[Bisset]

Oh man I know right. The future of the country? I just wanna know about how that bird off the only way is essex has changed her vagina.

[CrappyMike]

UKIP up 9.5% on last time so they have reason for optimism. Although once the EU membership issue is settled their balloon might deflate.

This election shows both why we need a different voting system...and also why we won't get another voting system gah

Would a change to PR not be in Labour's interest now?

PR would just weaken Labour further. A more representative system would take away the voters who feel that Labour were the only alternative to the Tories even if they didn't necessarily agree with their policies.

It would also take away the voters who see the Tories as the only alternative to labour. I think it would hurt those 2 parties equally

[kanet666]

It would bring in all the people who won't vote because it "doesn't count" in some constituencies and will allow people to stop tactical voting and actually vote for what they want, rather than what they feel they have to.

[CrappyMike]

I have actually never voted for the party I agree with most, because they have zero chance of winning anything. I voted labour this time because it was them or the SNP, and even UKIP had more policies I agreed with than the SNP, hidden away among some of the bad stuff

[Tet]

I just can't believe the Tories won... regardless of Labour, who thought the Torie's were a good idea? I honestly can't understand their appeal...

The joys of opposing viewpoints. FWIW, I feel much the same about Labour.

[Matty_the_Emo_Slayer]

In the last few days there seems to be a lot of misconceptions about what PR actually is, or at least the Single Transferable Vote system which is the one likely to be used if (when?) voting system reform actually happens here. There's so much "oh under PR Labour would have got x amount of seats" but it's really not the case. There is a system called Party List which gives a nearly perfect number of seats based on percentage of the national vote, but it doesn't get used in regional or council elections in the UK because there is no constituency representation with it. It also makes it impossible for any independents or parties who can't campaign nationally to get elected.

So the system wouldn't be bang on proportional, but it would be a lot more proportional than the current First Past The Post, and it would help Labour because of the likelihood of them getting second preference votes from other parties.

I did a bit of number crunching to give an example. Under STV the 5 constituencies in Aberdeenshire would likely become 1 constituency with 5 seats, and yesterday across the 5 of them there was 233,331 votes cast.

(233,331/5+1)+1=38,889 votes needed to be elected.

Using yesterdays votes we can see how first preference votes would be cast.

115,483 SNP
48,619 Conservative
32,148 Labour
31,962 Liberal Democrat
3255 UKIP/BNP
1849 Green
486 Independents

So on the first round of counting SNP's first candidate and the Conservative candidate are elected. The surplus SNP votes are transferred to those voters' 2nd preference, which most likely would be SNP's second candidate. Some of the Tory votes might get transferred to UKIP but barely any would to SNP, Labour or Lib Dems so lets ignore those.

On the second count the SNP's second candidate (now with 85,594 votes) is carried and the majority of the surplus pass to their third candidate. I know some of those might go to Labour or Lib Dems but as long as no more than 1184 of the surplus don't go to the 3rd SNP candidate then they will be elected on the third count.

On the 4th count as no one has enough votes to be carried the candidates with the least votes will be eliminated in order and their votes transferred to second preferences til either someone has enough or there is only one candidate left i.e. Labour. So rather than what happened yesterday where 5 SNP candidates were elected, and contrary to how people think the system would work there would have been 3 SNP, 1 Tory and 1 Labour MP elected there.

It's maybe not the best example to show how STV would regain Labour seats in Scotland as they would scrape through in Aberdeenshire going by yesterday's votes, but overall in Scotland under STV I estimate the 59 seats would have gone 30 SNP, 4 Conservative and 15 Labour.