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UK election: Conservatives lose majority

bbc.com

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Re: UK election: Conservatives lose majority

#191

Post by namlem »

HalfwayToDice wrote: post #74

Just a reminder, and I think it's getting lost here in the HackerNews demographic narrative.. but: The Conservatives Won The Election They will be ruling for 5 years, in a coalition with the even more conservative DUP. Labour/progressives are out of power for at least another 5 years. I know it's a bucket of cold water, but I think people aren't facing up to reality after Corbyn did much much better than expected. Bu…

DUP has a softer stance on Brexit than the tories. Soft Brexit was their condition for forming the coalition.

Re: UK election: Conservatives lose majority

#192

Post by parenthephobia »

walshemj wrote: post #178
taejo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few months ago people were talking about a 100-seat majority for the Tories. Now they have no majority at all: they'll need to get every member of their party plus a few from the DUP to agree to any controversial thing they want to pass (e.g. the Brexit treaty) which might force the government (administration) to make concessions to extreme wings of the party (e.g. a hard-Brexit faction).

actually for some votes that only effect England the DUP cant vote so they cant pass "English" bills without doing a deal with labor / liberals.

This isn't quite accurate.

On such bills there is an additional phase in the process where the English MPs can veto the bill, but they must also be voted through the full parliament.

Re: UK election: Conservatives lose majority

#193

Post by parenthephobia »

Simulacra wrote: post #190

I would really have loved to have been a fly on the wall when this decision was discussed. Maybe someone from the U.K. can explain why, if you have a majority and outright control of Parliament, that you might necessarily need to extend that majority?

> outright control of Parliament

Nobody has this! MPs are always free to vote their conscience, and sometimes they do. The Conservatives are not all of one mind about how to conduct Brexit.

The aim was not simply to increase the Conservative majority, but to try to make sure that the new MPs making up that increased majority were on board with May's hard Brexit, so there wasn't a risk of a backbench revolt scuppering Brexit.

The party used an "emergency procedure" for candidate selection that gave the party leadership more control than previous candidates.

* http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2017/05/central...

Re: UK election: Conservatives lose majority

#194

Post by Simulacra »

parenthephobia wrote: post #193
Simulacra wrote: post #190

I would really have loved to have been a fly on the wall when this decision was discussed. Maybe someone from the U.K. can explain why, if you have a majority and outright control of Parliament, that you might necessarily need to extend that majority?

> outright control of Parliament Nobody has this! MPs are always free to vote their conscience, and sometimes they do. The Conservatives are not all of one mind about how to conduct Brexit. The aim was not simply to increase the Conservative majority, but to try to make sure that the new MPs making up that increased majority were on board with May's hard Brexit, so there wasn't a risk of a backbench revolt scuppering…

Well this is technically the case in American politics. Please, why then is it so important to have a greater majority in the U.K.? Why do you need to reach that line?

Re: UK election: Conservatives lose majority

#195

Post by mamon »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #164
mamon wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always a tension between fairness and stability. In a perfectly fair system you can end up with dozens of small parties, each having small number of people in parliament, struggling to find majority for a government (see last elections in Netherlands). That's why some voting systems are designed to give a winning party some premium over their vote percentage.

As strange as it seems we may not have had brexit if UKIP had had representation proportional to their support. The reason we ended up going down that road is a large number of Tory MPs feared UKIP. In a proportional system that may not have mattered so much.

That's actually an advantage of British voting system: it makes issues that are important to a large minority of voters impossible to ignore.

Had UKIP had proportional representation in parliament their demands could be ignored forever. And while in this particular case Britain could be better off that way, it is a wrong thing to do in general.

Re: UK election: Conservatives lose majority

#196

Post by collyw »

keithpeter wrote: post #18
radicalbyte wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has a first-past-the-post system designed explicitly to stop coalitions. For the next few weeks the winning party will negotiate with the other parties and try to create a coalition. If that fails they can either try a minority government or a new election will be called. This time around a coalition will be hard, the third party (Lib Dems) went into a coalition with the Tories in 2010. It almost destroyed the…

DUP + Tories could manage a minority government given Sinn Fein's refusal to take up their 7 Westminster seats. I think the voting reflects the general uncertainty about the Brexit process, plus some of the under 30s actually getting out of bed this time... http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2017/06/... I actually saw queues outside polling stations yesterday.

Maye the under 30's got out of bed because they saw someone worth voting for (for a change).

Re: UK election: Conservatives lose majority

#197

Post by collyw »

mathw wrote: post #75
cm2187 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly. But Corbyn certainly benefited a lot from having a weak candidate against him. He could possibly not be so lucky if there is a new election.

Would depend a lot on who the Tories would pick to replace May, although the word this morning is that she has no intention of resigning. Doesn't mean someone isn't going to try and oust her though, there are a lot of Tories who'll be extremely angry with her after last night.

May has made u-turns on many of her promises recently.

Re: UK election: Conservatives lose majority

#198

Post by lostlogin »

majewsky wrote: post #182
walshemj wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it does mean that fringe extremist parties can get pet policies passed by holding their partners feet to the fire that the majority of the population wouldn't vote for Its why NI doesn't have abortion or the same rights for Gay people its down to the Ultras in the DUP as Churchill Said "nothing so loyal as an Ulster "policeman"

> But it does mean that fringe extremist parties can get pet policies passed by holding their partners feet to the fire that the majority of the population wouldn't vote for Evidence for this: CSU in Germany (the quite-a-bit-more-right-wing sister party of Merkel's CDU).

Evidence of it would be present in just about every MMP government ever formed. Here in New Zealand it's present. Sure, the tail wags the dog a little, but if it happens too much the larger party in government loses votes next election.

Re: UK election: Conservatives lose majority

#199

Post by lostlogin »

flukus wrote: post #160
lostlogin wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a slightly one eyed view of what's going on. What would you call the related events in Ukraine? There are plenty of other invasions that have been called reunifications or similar. Attacking a neighbour is quite different to a two state, democratic decision to join.

The bottom line is that most crimeans were in favour of reunification with Russian. The Ukraine government consistently blocked them from voting on the matter. Putin doesn't do much I'd agree with, but I think he was the good guy here.

That's incorrect. The election on the issue made them part of Ukraine (90's) rather than Russia and polling since has been consistently similar. The more recent faux referendum is universally condemned as a sham.

Re: UK election: Conservatives lose majority

#200

Post by tonyedgecombe »

mamon wrote: post #195
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As strange as it seems we may not have had brexit if UKIP had had representation proportional to their support. The reason we ended up going down that road is a large number of Tory MPs feared UKIP. In a proportional system that may not have mattered so much.

That's actually an advantage of British voting system: it makes issues that are important to a large minority of voters impossible to ignore. Had UKIP had proportional representation in parliament their demands could be ignored forever. And while in this particular case Britain could be better off that way, it is a wrong thing to do in general.

I'm not sure they would have been ignored, perhaps they may have had enough influence to stop it becoming such a big issue.

I was strongly in favour of remain but I can see some people felt they weren't benefiting from the UK being a member of the EU. If they had been given a bit more attention early on we may not have ended up in this mess.

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