Dutch commentary on the election results: "Well we had it all explained to us by the London School of Economics for three hours but we still don't get it so congratulations to whoever has won this thing." Made me laugh. Why do you Brits have to make these things so complicated? Or should I say undemocratic even?
How is it difficult -- if you win a majority you are PM. Otherwise you form a coalition. Not exactly rocket science. (Or tulip science even )
In fairness, given the changes in the world the old consensus and the old certainties have gone away. Hence, political confusion in the democracies. Consider: US in 2000 Germany in 2005 ended up with a Grand Coalition of the right and left after weeks of inconclusive coalition building Has Belgium finally formed a government after their last election in what 2007? When is the last time Canada had a majority government? France in 2002
I wonder how Dave feels about the Conservatives' mandate to govern Scotland and Northern Ireland, given that they managed to win a massive one seat between the two countries.
Nick Clegg comes out and says he sticks by his view that the party with the most votes and seats should have the right to form a government. Bravo! We may not want the Tories in, but a suitably large number of our fellow citizens disagree. They should not be disenfranchised by our absurd system.
That said - David Cameron has to be under the microscope a bit here, no? Thirteen years of either ineffectual or actively damaging incompetence from Labour, a collapse in the expected Lib Dem vote and just six weeks ago he had a double-digit lead. And he doesn't win the election. That's going to be raising a few eyebrows in the Shires, I don't doubt here'll be some harrumphing over the pre-lunch G&T's today.
I agree, I didn't vote for the Tories but it's clear from the number of seats won and the vote swing that the majority of the country doesn't want another Labour government. The idea of a Cameron Government scares me quite a bit but the country isn't in a position to spend too long arguing about who has the right to form a Government.
That's not exactly that uncommon, though - the more famous grand coalition was in the 1960s, and there have been many on state level since the 1950s. Plus, there were two grand coalitions between social democrats and conservatives in the Weimar Republic. And both SPD and CDU are centrist parties anyway (center left and right, but especially under Merkel the CDU hasn't anything even resembling an ideology - or competence, but whatever).
20m of the 28m votes counted so far are for someone other than Labour. And yet unless Labour voluntarily give it up or the Lib Dems reject coalition advances, we'll have a Labour government.
The Lib Dems got 22% fewer votes than Labour and will end up with 79% fewer seats than Labour. One thing's for sure (and we should all rejoice in it): this election is the last that will be fought under these absurdly anti-democratic terms.
There's no possibility of it being a labour government under any circumstances because they didn't win an overall majority. It shouldn't be the tories either because neither did they. Unfortunately, as I said before, this is all being discussed as if it were the X-Factor or 'Britain's Got talent'. It's not. The liberals have set out a manifesto of policies which are flatly contradicted by most of the conservative policies so if they're going to ignore all that, (despite having spent months wittering on saying that politics is a serious matter and not just a popularity contest), and come to an agreement with the tories, they've got some 'splaining' to do. The voters have made it pretty clear that despite 13 years of labour rule, the Iraq war and the economic crisis they STILL don't want the tories so to argue, (as the tories seem to be trying to do), that this means the tories have a clear mandate, is nonsense. They haven't. Nobody has won the election. That's the bottom line!
You know what I mean. If Brown does a deal with Clegg then it's a government in which Clegg, Cable and perhaps Hearn get Cabinet seats, but the PM remains Gordon Brown and the majority of the government will be Labour. They did win the largest number of votes and seats. They should be allowed first dibs at forming a government. I agree that a formal coalition with the Lib Dems is unlikely, however. What we are about to get is a Labour-led coalition government that will last around six months and then another election will be called in which the Tories will win an outright majority.
Let's hope so but if the liberals agree to forming a con/lib pact WITHOUT a specific agreement on a referendum, (including a date and the question to be asked), then it becomes harder as time goes on for Clegg to say, 'Right, I've given you 'x' months of support on a program, now where's my referendum?'. If he then says he's taking his ball and going home, he'll look like he's doing it for purely political reasons and that doesn't exactly sit with his holier than thou image. More to the point, under those circumstances, if the conservatives decide to have another election, (if they fail a vote of no confidence in the house), the liberals will be annihilated in the resulting election PARTICULARLY because many of the policies the conservatives and they will have introduced will not be, shall we say, 'universally popular'. Perversely enough, it's PRECISELY because the tories have won enough seats to ALMOST form a government that is the danger for the liberals if they don't act sensibly and, (leaving party politics on one side), for the issue of PR in this country.
Well, that's a possibility I suppose but I'm not so sure. If we have a referendum on PR then all bets are off because my hope, (and it's no more than that atm), is that it will cause a realignment such that I don't have to vote for someone who finds it necessary to apologise for being a socialist. Regarding Brown still being PM in the circumstances you set out... I'm not so sure about that either but we'll see.
It was an old-fashioned labour/conservative squeeze, mate. It's an axiom, (albeit probably wrong), of British politics that people vote AGAINST the side they don't like rather than for the side they do. Hopefully, if we get PR that can change... as long as Clegg doesn't feck it up.
I haven't done the exercise but I bet if you examined the various policies one by one and placed them on a grid of being either left-wing or right-wing, with no mention of which party supports them, you'd find that there's a clear mandate for a centre left government and yet STILL the 'meeja' are presenting it like the X-Factor.
It looks like quite a few of the voting problems were as a result of the 'yoof' forgetting their voting cards and thus making things go more slowly. Seems they'd been told that the polls opened at 7 but clearly didn't realise there was more than one of them OH FFS! if I see Jeremy Vine standing in front of a moving graphic again I'm gonna put my foot through the TV.
Interesting graphic explaining what happens from now on. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8660699.stm
They haven't had a mandate to govern Scotland for years and yet, strangely, that doesn't seem to bother them. At least the policies of the labour party are broadly in line with the SNP.
Brown due to speak any minute. BBC just speculating on the fact that Brown's people have loosely intimated that he might resign as part of a pact with the Lib Dems.
Nick Robinson still trying to talk the tories up I see Meanwhile Brown has said that labour can still govern but maybe not with him as prime minister.