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Old 06-08-2017, 11:28 PM
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Default UK election

Can't come up with a snazzy thread title. But the BBC is reporting exit polls suggest the Tories will not have a majority.

Election 2017: Tories to be largest party - exit poll - BBC News
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Old 06-08-2017, 11:41 PM
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Default Re: UK election

Yeah, I posted something in News Miscellany but it deserves its own thread.
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Old 06-09-2017, 12:05 AM
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Default Re: UK election

The few results so far have the Tories doing better than the exit polls suggest.
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Old 06-09-2017, 01:10 AM
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Old 06-09-2017, 01:11 AM
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Default Re: UK election

However, the #ExitPoll will not be right. Tories will get a slight majority and we will be in the same mess.
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Old 06-09-2017, 01:21 AM
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Default Re: UK election

A different mess would've been nice. :sadcheer:
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Old 06-09-2017, 01:31 AM
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Default Re: UK election

David Cameron shot himself in the foot by calling the Brexit referendum. Then he resigned.

Theresa May shot herself in the foot by calling a snap election because she underestimated Corbyn and then campaigned so abysmally that she blew a nearly 20 pt lead and (seems likely to be) losing seats.

So does she resign too?
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Old 06-09-2017, 01:40 AM
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Default Re: UK election

While we wait for more results, have a browse of #LastMinuteCorbynSmears

Apologist for Snickers: Twitter users hit back against attack on Corbyn | Politics | The Guardian
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Old 06-09-2017, 01:40 AM
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Default Re: UK election

Well this is going to be a weird result based on what we've seen so far.
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Old 06-09-2017, 02:35 AM
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Default Re: UK election

I only follow British politics from a distance and occasionally watch an HIGNFY (which I think probably makes me one of America's foremost experts on British politics), but I love watching UK election returns. The BBC is not afraid to be goofy with the goofy gimmicks they use to fill time before returns come in, and it seems like David Dimbleby ran out of fucks to give a long time ago.
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Old 06-09-2017, 04:56 AM
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Default Re: UK election

So far looks like a fairly complicated swing between various parties. Where did the collapsed UKIP vote go to? And the reduced SNP vote? How much over Labour's increased share was from these smaller parties or directly from the Conservatives?
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Old 06-09-2017, 07:00 AM
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Default Re: UK election

As an observer of British politics from across the pond, I can't promise a particularly reliable read on what's going on over there, but this is how things look to me, drawing from my perusal of the BBC, the Independent, the Grauniad, a few blog comment sections, and my own (fairly limited) experiences with British politics:

It actually looks like some of the SNP vote went to the Tories, which appears to be the only thing that is saving the Tories from being completely unable to form a majority coalition at all. With Sinn Féin abstaining, and with the Democratic Unionists apparently being unwilling to form a coalition with Corbyn, it appears that Tories+DUP are at 321 seats right now, which is just shy of the 322 threshold that will be needed to form a government. It is possible that Labour+SNP+LDP+Greens+Plaid Cymru+independents will be able to surpass that threshold, but unlikely - I think they're at about 315 seats right now, but I'm too lazy to do the maths.

Regardless, this is an absolutely disastrous outcome for May. I can't imagine she survives much longer as prime minister even if she does manage to pull out a majority coalition from these results. I also can't imagine the government itself will last very long. The majority of seats is going to be something like 3-5 for whoever ends up in power at the most. That's not enough to do... much of anything, really.

These results certainly look like a rejection of May's hard-Brexit stance (the DUP are certainly going to want the conditions of Brexit to be as mild as possible given that they represent Northern Ireland) and they also look like a rejection of the Tories' austerity policies. But apart from that, I can't make heads or tails out of them. This is quite possibly the strangest election I've ever seen in my lifetime. The fact that it's a snap election makes it intrinsically strange already; the fact that it backfired this spectacularly with as sharp a polling turnaround as it did is unlike anything I've ever seen. May was projected to have something like a twenty-point advantage when she called the election. I haven't ever seen someone squander a lead that quickly. Some of this appears to be a result of May being a much less competent campaigner and Corbyn a much more competent campaigner than observers predicted; some of it appears to be because voters actually liked Corbyn's manifesto.

But beyond that, I don't have a read on what's going on, much less what will happen over the next few weeks. I can't imagine this government lasting long either way, though, and if another election is called, I can't imagine what the results will be. (For that matter, I don't even have a good handle on who the next Tory leader is likely to be.)

e: while I wrote this, the Grauniad bumped the Tories up to 312 seats and Auntie Beeb bumped them up to 313. So it looks like they'll get their majority coalition, but it's still an absolute disaster for them.

In any case, because the Tories' lead is so greatly reduced, even if this government does manage to last for awhile, the results will greatly limit how much they can continue pulling the country to the right. And actually, since this outcome is likely to be viewed as a vindication of Corbyn's manifesto, it's likely to shift the overall political discourse of the country significantly to the left.

e2: From the political editor of the Economist:


Seems like a good point; there is such internal division between the Conservatives themselves about how to handle Brexit that the entire political foundation of the country is profoundly unstable. I wonder if this will end up like the time a few years back when Belgium kept being unable to form governments.
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Old 06-09-2017, 07:08 AM
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Default Re: UK election

People are saying Boris Johnson. But I can imagine quite a few Tories will not feel the lesson is to pick a leader who's more like Trump.

I wonder why the Conservatives did so well in Scotland though. They haven't won more than one seat there since 1992. May is going to have some problems, but I have to imagine Nicola Sturgeon has to be wondering WTF happened also.

I wonder if Sinn Fein would consider taking their seats just to prevent DUP from being in a majority coalition... :wish:

It seems likely that the Tories + DUP get to 326 though... Although coalition with the DUP won't be cost-free for the Tories.
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Old 06-09-2017, 08:28 AM
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Default Re: UK election

#strongandstable

That is all.
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Old 06-09-2017, 08:30 AM
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Default Re: UK election

Quote:
Originally Posted by Watser? View Post
A different mess would've been nice. :sadcheer:
Well, we got it. (Different from the mess of the past few months anyway.) It's "wtf we didn't plan for this" all over again, like after the brexit vote.
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Old 06-09-2017, 08:51 AM
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Default Re: UK election

And some more tweets.











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Old 06-09-2017, 08:51 AM
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Default Re: UK election

And ...


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Old 06-09-2017, 08:53 AM
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Default Re: UK election

Meanwhile, over 200 female MPs elected. High turnout, especially among younger voters. Good news for democracy.
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Old 06-09-2017, 09:23 AM
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Default Re: UK election

DUP leader Arlene Foster is being surprisingly noncommittal about whom she intends to form a government with. A minority government actually looks like a somewhat plausible outcome now.

I do wonder about the Scottish Conservatives as well. The Scots were very anti-Brexit and it had been suggested they might try another independence referendum if Brexit went through. And all of a sudden, there's a spike in votes for the hard-Brexit party? I... don't have an explanation for that. First-past-the-post weirdness might explain some of it, but surely for that to be a factor there would have to be an increase in Tory votes in the first place. I don't have an explanation for that, though it does seem like Ruth Davidson's less extreme stance on Brexit may have influenced the other Scottish Tories. Perhaps that's part of it.

To answer another of fragment's questions above, though, it does look like a lot of UKIP's collapsed vote share went to the Tories, and most of the remaining share went to Labour. If I had to guess, I'd wager probably a two-to-one ratio.

edit: Looks like Foster reached a deal with May. I suspect this is going to be a very unstable coalition, though, not least because the DUP's position is so precarious. It's also a rather bizarre irony that Sinn Féin's abstention may actually result in the DUP having much greater direction over what happens to Northern Ireland in the coming months and years than they would otherwise. I don't fully understand the intricacies of Northern Irish politics, though, so I can't comment on that in as great depth as I would like.
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Old 06-09-2017, 10:39 AM
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Default Re: UK election

May is going to try to form a government with the DUP. She's reached some agreement and is off to the Queen at 12.30. So we're stuck with her (until she resigns in another u-turn, no doubt).
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Old 06-09-2017, 11:07 AM
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Default Re: UK election

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Man View Post
I do wonder about the Scottish Conservatives as well.
Yeah, what the hell, Scotland? That's a near doubling of the Conservative vote since two years ago. Results of the 2017 General Election - BBC News

Quote:
To answer another of fragment's questions above, though, it does look like a lot of UKIP's collapsed vote share went to the Tories, and most of the remaining share went to Labour. If I had to guess, I'd wager probably a two-to-one ratio.
Which suggests a lot of Tory voters moved to Labour, in England anyway, since the Tories lost vote share overall.
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Old 06-09-2017, 11:15 AM
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Default Re: UK election

Turnout was also much higher, particularly amongst the 18-24 demographic. Some of the stats are over 70%, which is astonishing.
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Old 06-09-2017, 02:50 PM
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Default Re: UK election

If your politicians can eat a little crow - and plainly they should - a minority government may be survivable. Up in Canada we used to have them for years and years. Not having one for many years at a stretch looked to me like a sea-change...
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Old 06-09-2017, 04:03 PM
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Quote:
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(until she resigns in another u-turn, no doubt).
Stability!

Actually ... she's promising "a period of certainty", and it's a certainty that there will be moves against her, so there's that.
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Old 06-09-2017, 04:26 PM
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