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posted by CoolHand on Saturday May 09 2015, @06:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the surprised-Brits dept.

BBC News reports that the Conservatives have defied pre-election polls and all the exit polls to win an overall majority in the House of Commons. The race was thought to be much closer than the final results have shown, with many predicting either another coalition government or possibly a minority Conservative government being formed.

The Conservatives made gains in England and Wales and are forecast by the BBC to secure 331 seats in the Commons, giving them a slender majority. Sources say [Labour leader] Ed Miliband is expected to stand down after Labour was all but wiped out by the [Scottish National Party] in Scotland. [Liberal Democrat] leader Nick Clegg has already said he will quit, with his party set to be reduced from 57 to eight MPs. [United Kingdom Independence Party] leader Nigel Farage is also quitting after he failed to win Thanet South, losing by nearly 2,800 votes to the Conservatives.

The Conservatives have taken 331 of the 650 seats available. However, when Sinn Fein's continued boycott of Westminster is taken into account, along with the four seats they current hold, 324 is enough for a practical majority. An overall turnout of 66% is expected, marginally up on the previous general election in 2010.

Shortly after the results of the exit polls were revealed, Lord Ashdown, former leader of the Liberal Democrats, stated in a live interview on the BBC that he would "eat his hat" if the predicted losses for the Liberal Democrats came true. The poll showed the Lib Dems losing 45 seats - in the end they lost 47. Lord Ashdown mentioned shortly after he made the statement that he had received through Twitter ten offers of hats if he didn't have one of his own.

For those of us not familiar with UK politics, what are the views of the Conservatives we should be concerned about (if any)? How will their viewpoints affect the world political stage and/or the technology world?

 
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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @12:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @12:27PM (#180730)

    It wasn't just "in 1 Election".

    The Alberta NDP have been spinning their wheels there for decades, getting nowhere. The party traces its roots back to the 1930s, for fuck's sake, and to the 1960s in its present form. We're talking about 50 to 80 years of total ineffectiveness, over many elections!

    And they didn't really "win" the election on their own merit; the PC party just happened to lose the election this time around. The NDP did only get 40% of the popular vote. The two right-leaning parties, the PC and Wildrose, got well over 50% of the votes when combined. The Alberta electorate clearly leans very much to the right, like it always has.

    It's a very similar situation to what has happened at the federal level. The federal Conservatives are like Alberta's NDP. They don't get anywhere near 50% of the votes, but still get a majority in terms of parliament seats, due to the opposite side of the spectrum being split among two relatively popular parties (the federal Liberals and NDP).

    Both are examples of flawed electoral systems resulting in less-popular parties receiving a disproportionate number of seats in parliament, sometimes to the point of being a majority. It doesn't reflect the political reality. In Alberta, the political reality is that the electorate is right-leaning, even if the NDP are in power with a majority. Federally, the political reality is that the electorate is left-leaning, even if the Conservatives are in power with a majority.

    I know you desperately feel the need to push your socialist/communist tendencies whenever and wherever you can, but the NDP win in Alberta is clearly nothing more than the right-leaning voters, which make up the clear majority of voters, splitting their vote among two parties, while the left-leaning vote was much more focused on a single party.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @09:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @09:28PM (#180865)

    decades

    already covered with
    longest reigning government

    ...and the numbers clearly show that it -was- accomplished in 1 election.
    How did you get out of elementary school unable to do basic Arithmetic?
    (The same for whomever mod'd you Informative.)

    right-leaning voters [...] splitting their vote

    So, it's exactly like what happened in the UK, except that the sides|numbers are switched.

    your socialist/communist tendencies

    Here we go with the Faux Noose spin and name-calling.
    Can't refute the facts|numbers, so you start slinging what you want folks to believe is mud.
    (The opposite of what I support is 99.99 percent serfs and a tiny elite class; the vast majority agrees with me.)

    ...and the NDP is Left-leaning; they aren't really Left--they're just slightly less Wrong-Wing.

    flawed electoral systems

    A parliamentary system is WAY better than what we have in the USA.
    How would you improve the Canadian system?

    -- gewg_

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 10 2015, @04:53PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 10 2015, @04:53PM (#181113)

      (The opposite of what I support is 99.99 percent serfs and a tiny elite class; the vast majority agrees with me.)

      Sadly, an overwhelming majority of people do support 99.99% serfs and a tiny elite class, and vote constantly to push things further and further in that direction, because they have idiotic fantasies where they themselves are or will be part of the tiny elite class, so they want it to have as much power as possible, not realizing that it will never, ever be possible for them to improve their lot in life because they themselves have been removing every possibility of upward mobility every chance they have. This is why people in poverty support billionaire tax breaks and the destruction of unions and other things that benefit no-one except the neo-aristocracy. Fucking morons don't seem to realize that taking away every possibility and opportunity to improve one's social/economic class means they too will never rise above the serf class.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 10 2015, @07:36PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 10 2015, @07:36PM (#181142)

        Yeah, there is an oft-repeated claim that USAians are closet Reactionaries with Crony Capitalist sensibilities.
        "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves, not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." --often attributed to John Steinbeck [wikiquote.org]

        I'm not buying it.
        With 60-some percent staying away from the polls on election day, I'm going to say that there is a huge number who simply aren't hearing what they want to hear from any politician and don't see enough of a difference between the sides to bother voting for the lesser of 2 evils.

        Contrary to what Lamestream Media would have us believe, there is a majority of Progressive Centrists on every single issue--very often a supermajority. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [firedoglake.com]

        -- gewg_